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Red Nail · #18 (**permalink**) 09-20-2008

“I’m not helpless you know, ‘gramps,’” Jorgan played off the man’s own foolish old man comment, “If I just turned it in to some random guard then I might get hauled in for obstructing the Committee’s due process. I was going to be right at their gates before I handed it over. That, and it would have been just as obvious for me to take off my vest in public, like I was trying to hide.”

“Now that I’ve got a nice quiet shop though…” Jordan mostly said to himself as he shucked his pack and his vest.

He put the box back into his sack for what seemed like the umpteenth time and wrapped it in his guild vest. He cinched up the sack and sung it onto his back again, securely. Finished, he pondered the box maker’s last question. He hoped that it wasn’t who he thought it was, but he had to know for certain.

“Was it Salarishkay?”

--

The fanged man knew something was up when the first of his men screamed, scooped up by the hunting gate. He watched like the rest of his men, in rapt fascination, as it ate. The scooped up guard wasn’t so much chewed as he was sliced up by the folding convulsions of the thing. The strange angles the gate subjected the man to severed limbs and cleanly, allowing them to send out sprays of blood that had no vessels to contain them. Each severed part and every drop of blood hung motionless in the air, caught in the monstrous thing’s pull. Eventually the thing sucked everything in, once again becoming nothing more than a mouth and eyes in the air.

More disturbing than the death of their comrade or the horror of something that could kill so easily and cleaning, was the fact that there was no sound. After the initial scream there was dead silence. Even when they could see the mutilated and rotting bodies beyond the teeth, there was no sound. The stories about the howls of the dead were wrong. The thing just ate and let noting escape it.

The fanged man was the first to snap out of it. He turned to the door and shot at it’s locking mechanism with his shotgun. It burst forward and in, tearing off it’s hinges. The fanged man looked around at the clutter of textbooks and equipment and then finally at the roof at hatch at the top. While his men quietly died behind him, he sniffed around, tracking the most recent trail of the vench that lived here. There was no doubt that her scent matched the note and that she was a scientist of some sort. Ignoring the equipment for now, he went strait for the bookshelf where the trail ended.

Without waiting to see the last of his men get eaten by the thing, he shoved the book case aside and dove into the darkness of the sewers he smelled beyond. Re ran then, sure the thing would be on his tail for a little while, but he was swift and sure as he tracked her scent. While he ran his nose picked apart her scent.

She was old, smelled older than even the post-metamorphosis vench and she smelled scared and frantic. There was a veneer of calm riding the scent though. When he’d find her, he’d have to be cautious for tricks.

“I’m in pursuit of my lead, Trent,” the fanged man whispered loudly, “She’ll hit the streets soon, if she hasn’t already. Keep an eye out. I’ll be riding her ass all the way there if she does spot me.”

He tapped his ear twice, which looked fake in the phosphorescence of the neon signs in the tunnels, and spoke again, “Croy. I can confirm a sighting of an actual hunting gate in Ruin. This might be the one you’re looking for. Get a team together and grab it. You might want to look over my target’s house as well. It can’t be a coincidence that she’s a scientist and that a tack from the guild she contacted took off with some of the documents from the gate project. I think she stumbled upon the project and got greedy.”

“I don’t care if it’s not a good time,” the fanged man hissed, “Get your wooden ass down here and contain that thing. Adnan out.”