Ike’s vitriol did not take Evgeny completely unawares. The noble schoolteacher wasn’t the kind of man to pretend that abominable cruelty didn’t exist out there, and he knew that much hatred and resentment dwelled amongst the citizens of Belka. He knew strong, forceful emotions well, but it was his empathy that set him apart. Not many would imagine the oddly-dressed, gangly nobleman of Belka to be able to connect with people, but he prided himself on his humanity against all odds.
More surprising to Evgeny was Riona’s nigh-excessive politeness, which he treated to a smile and a returned bow. Those few who felt and could demonstrate respect and propriety should, after all, be encouraged to continue. The world’s habit of disappointing those with compassionate or considerate spirits had convinced Evgeny long ago to cultivate such inclinations whenever he could. “Not at all. Life can be cruel, sometimes, and everyone can appreciate an ear to listen to their lamentation. As for your question, we do not leave town much. The craglands are treacherous to simple folk. Of course, there are a few traveling merchants among us, but we do not keep tabs on such individuals. They seldom stay here long, so I would not expect that you might encounter any.”
Though silent for a while now, Joakim took the opportunity to speak up. He exhibited an assured air, highlighted with an undertone of urgency.
”Thank you for your time, sir. We appreciate your openness and the effort you’ve gone to in order to accommodate us. I think it’s about time we took our leave.” To this, Evgeny bowed slightly, as he had assumed the gesture to be one common to Frenzy Plant, and he bid them farewell. Joakim left the building, leaving a trail of cold air in his wake, and stood outside to wait for the others. When they arrived, the trio began to walk, and the arctic wizard murmured to them,
”Safe to say, I think, that this killer was one of the refugees of Eigenahl. He might be dead, but it’s possible he left something foul behind before his hanging. We should report this to Sanders immediately. Did anything stand out to you? Any sort of leads or hints you pick up on from Evgeny’s explanation?”For a moment Harper worried that the others, particularly the rather stolid Thor, would think of her suggestion –and by extension her- as childish. Ashlyn’s eagerness to leap into the unknown quelled this concern and instilled in the young ninja a flare of hype. Any sort of terrifying, dangerous monstrosity could lay in that darkness, but the soldiers of Frenzy Plant would not hesitate. She waited for Thor to follow Ashlyn, though slightly brought down by the doubting stare of the lightning wizard, and when she alone stood at the top of the ladder she gathered herself up before diving like a swimmer down the hole. In midair she rotated, shakily confident that the others would get out of the way. With barely a noise she landed in an elaborate pose, completely dispelling the force of the impact thanks to her Shinobi martial art, and her heart soared at the thought that she might for once be a proper ninja. Rather than resting on her laurels, however, she stood back up to a normal position and wasted no time in looking around.
Ashlyn, Thor, and Harper stood at one end of an oblong rock hollow, obviously pre-existing and not carved, but nevertheless touched up in a macabre fashion. Scattered around the cave were various traces of occupants, like burnt-out fire pits and mounds of trash, but compared to the more unsettling aspects of the place these were hardly significant. Situated along the walls of the cave were crude cells small enough to be cages and made of wood. Though eight of these stood about, only five were filled—two were open, and the largest one appeared to be broken open. In the remaining cells were shapes, difficult to discern in the awful light but without a doubt humanoid. One of the farthest cells seemed to be emitting a guttural hawking noise constantly, but Harper did not feel inclined to advance into the total dark. She, as evidenced by the risen hairs on the back of her neck, wide eyes, and shivers, was thoroughly frightened. This place struck her as the stuff of horror stories. She spotted what looked like a rotting corpse on a hook disturbingly close to the ladder and recoiled.
”Um. Can…can one of you make some light? I…!” The gibbering noises swelled in intensity as she spoke, scaring her into silence.
“Yes, that’s okay,” the woman blubbered. With a titanic effort she heaved herself to her feet. She watched Gabriel summon Dog with a delayed, dull surprise, and waited until Enma doled out his orders before speaking again. “I wanna go with you. There’s a little square past this ally, and if there are other people you might need me to point him out. I’ll be fine; it’s only a little cut.” She pointed a sausage-like finger down the alley, angled slightly to the left. “That way.”
The group of five moved quickly and with intent, despite the ponderousness of the distressed woman. They maneuvered past all sorts of junk lining the alley, from thrown-out farm equipment to puddles of unidentifiable, noxious substances. Rolling clouds of assorted shades of gray, each darker and more ominous than the last, swept overhead. Yellow lamps and flickering fires cast enough light into the alley to see well enough, but it could not fight away a steadily growing sense of dread. Naturally, the woman fell to the back of the group. At her direction, the envoys from Frenzy Plant passed beneath a wooden arch, rounded a corner, and immediately after discovered two things. Firstly, the flooring had changed from sparsely-grassed dirt to wood; secondly, a dead end lay only a few meters in front of them.
Before Mercury could turn around and give voice to his confusion, the portly woman, who’d fallen so far behind that she was still standing on earth, called, “Oh, no! Whatever will I do to get my purse back after my brave heroes fell down a hole? Woe is me!” She kicked a piece of metal on the ground, which clicked like a switch, and abruptly the floor vanished from beneath the soldiers. Mercury yelled, half in surprise and half in anger, but dropped before he could produce his kamas. Down the hole the soldiers plummeted. By the time Mercury’s kamas were in his hands, he’d fallen too far to have any chance of pulling himself up, and resigned himself to the drop. Over the edge of the hole, a flabby, smirking face peered. “Buh bye!”
Mercury landed in a roll, negating some of the falling damage but not enough to stop a nasty cracking noise from his ankles.
”Agh! Fat bitch!” he growled, though inwardly he was glad that the pitfall led into a cave and not, say, off the cliff and to certain death. Looking around, he could see that the room did in fact have several gaps in the floor through which the waning daylight could be seen, which mean that if he fancied falling to his death he could still give it a go. At first glance, there didn’t seem to be an exit. He could not take a second glance, however, for he noticed with a rush of fear that there seemed to be a horde of huge spiders closing in on the soldiers, scuttling from the shadows like a creepy, leggy river.
”Ah, hell. This makes dealin’ with plague victims seem like treadin’ water. Well, come on, ya filthy bugs! I’ll take y’all apart piece by piece!” Ni Rensa – Cinders of a Home
@zarkun Taking a deep breath, Ni moved out of the cinders of the wrecked house. She told Damian,
”We oughta move onya. We got everything we nyeed here, I think.” A quick look at Eliza earned her a nod signifying her concurrence, and both female soldiers looked to the Blade of Phoenix Wing to lead the way to the graveyard.
In the back of his mind, Chester hadn’t expected the sealing to go off without a hitch, but he had not adequately prepared himself for Argus’ fit. He flinched visibly when the demon threw out a hand, and his heart did not stop its heightened beating when the wall of energy appeared. A few moments passed while the scout waited, fearful but hopeful. Then the danger passed, and Argus composed himself, though Chester felt that his problems had only just begun. The demon’s irritated scowl confirmed it. He steeled himself for what Argus would say, and tried not to shiver as he made his demands in a menacing tone.
Neither Tsubano nor Chester responded to his declaration. The scout watched the witch as if he could discern her expression beneath her mask. He knew what was going through her mind, though, because it was exactly what was going through his:
destroying the Seal of Denial has a tremendous negative feedback on the sealed being. Even then, this guy would probably survive. However…if he rebukes the Seal, he is effectively rebuking the endeavors of Frenzy Plant to control his dark side. If he is unwilling to be controlled and changed so as to expel the demon inside him…we’ll have to kill him. It was a sobering though. So caught up was he on his thoughts that he didn’t notice Tsubano turning and heading back toward Belka until she was already a few steps away. Wordlessly he followed.
Across the building, the cleric held his hands up in placation. To either side of him, his understudies took over, and he voice to their leader resounded through the chapel. “Wait! I know this must look bad to an outsider. Just wait a moment! This is how we do some of our healing here in Belka. This man has been suffering from indigestion and aching guts for months. We gave him medicine to numb the pain and some other serums. As soon as we remove the malignant intestines, new ones will grow in their place and he will heal. Watch!” He bent over the afflicted man in concentrated silence.
With a wet plop, the gruesome innards of the man lying on the altar fully departed the body. Before the eyes of the Frenzy Plant soldiers the large holes in the man’s belly began to close, and while the blood didn’t disappear, all traces of the cuts vanished. After this, the man lay still, but his chest moved up and down as he breathed, and the uncomfortable expression on his face lessened in severity. When Bytan, clearly embarrassed by his unjust assumptions, looked back at the cleric, he found his eyes hard and suspicious. “So, what was that about evil in this town? You’re not snooping around, are you?”
To set straight any worries and atone for his misunderstanding, Bytan attempted to explain himself—without, of course, compromising Frenzy Plant. He continuously fumbled his words, making Nandy more and more uneasy, and after a minute of Bytan’s flubbing he took the initiative.
”My apologies, esteemed councilors. My granddad is cantankerous and senile, and sometimes his imagination got away from him. We were tasked with exploring the town to try and find people we could help in repayment for your hospitality, and granddad got a little too excited. We are deeply sorry for interrupting you, and for his false accusations.”After a few more seconds of narrowed eyes, the clerics bought it. The leader shrugged. “These things happen. None of us are getting any younger. The important thing is understanding. If you’re trying to help people out, I know a couple townsfolk who could use a few extra hands. Come with me.”
The head cleric beckoned, and the three envoys of Frenzy Plant hurried toward him. He then led the way to a back room, conspicuously carrying the intestines in a large bowl. The moment he opened the door, a pungent odor slammed into the soldiers strong enough to make heads swim. Undeterred, the cleric strode forward to the edge of a huge circular pit in the center of the room before upending the bowl into it. Nandy, once recovered from the smell, followed in his footsteps, and beheld inside the pit a pool of flesh. All kinds of body parts, from ears and noses to fingernails and guts, as well as a lot of muscle and fat, lay in a single, grotesque heap. Though bewildered and horrified, Nandy could not keep himself from staring, and he noticed that there didn’t appear to be any sort of rot or decay in the heap. The cleric, seeing his repulsed confusion, explained to the soldiers, “This is the resting place of the various byproducts produced by the unique healing of Belka. Thanks to our medicinal preservatives, none of it decomposes, and it sits in a sort of chemical suspension. It is a rather crude analogy, but what this does is like curing meat. It cleanses the parts, slowly fixing whatever was wrong with them, and we can then use them in operations when patients need replacements. You may not have known, but Belka is the number-one supplier in Fiore of donated human parts for transplants. This way, nobody loses. Those that don’t get used are burnt in offering to the region’s guardian spirit. This may seem odd, but we could have things a lot worse, eh?”
Nandy was overwhelmed. Everything seemed so bizarre and vile, but the cleric seemed to be telling the truth.
”I…I guess?” He needed some air.
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