Tales of Ruuin - Homecoming

The work is never done

Skullgarden Mortuary

Tal, Kingdom of Morgenheim

Fall, 11th Butchermoon, Year 1876

"Oh, gods, the smell," Burgomaster Halsted muttered, eyes wide in his bearded face as he looked around the mortuary.

He was a big man, could have been Echser's twin in his former life, with an ample gut and trunk-like legs. The alchemist sighed and put down his blood-spattered bone saw, wiping equally bloody hands on his no less stained apron. Here it comes...

Halsted began dry heaving, "I can't... I can't..." turned from the mountain of scooped out ghoul skulls – and vomited onto the shoes of one of his underlings. "Bleargh!"

Echser shook his head, knowing what would follow. It was a strange phenomenon but well-established that vomiting often sparked a chain reaction. Soon, there was gagging all around. Tal's city treasurer, the two scribes, the captain of the guard, even the muscular bodyguards... They all turned interesting shades of green, bringing out scented handkerchiefs in an attempt to avoid the unavoidable.

"As you can see, meine Herren," said Craven, utterly unaffected. "You had quite the infestation at your hands – and my traps are still bringing down stragglers returning to the nest every day." He grabbed the skull of a normal ghoul, which along with a fair number of his brethren the bounty killer had actually placed inside the matriarch's empty brain cavity. "Thirty-nine in total so far – not counting this enormous specimen here: a matriarch."

His gloved hand gently stroked one of the ghoul queen's blood-clotted strands of hair. A disturbing sight, to Echser's mind, though most of the others in the room seemed to find it mostly revolting. One of the puffed-up little officials that had come along stumbled towards the door, leaving a trail of sick in his wake.

Craven just drove his rhetorical stiletto in deeper. "You truly should count yourself lucky to stand witness to such a momentous discovery. Most would have considered the existence of a queen of the ghouls as nothing but a legend – and a preposterous one to boot. Truly, this is such stuff as dreams are made off." A wicked smile crept over his features. "Or should I say: nightmares? That being said, do you still insist on counting all the skulls we have taken to justify my... hmm... what did you call it? My exorbitant fee? Then, by all means, let us begin, shall we? One..."

The bounty killer tossed the skull he held at the treasurer, the head's top, still attached by a little skin, flapping in the air like the broken wing of a raven. The city official actually caught it, yelped, and vomited in an impressive display of multitasking. Then it was back to spewing all over the place.

Echser shot Craven an irritated glance. "Did you really have to? I still have to work here, and even with the ice blocks to keep the skulls cool, the smell is bad enough."

Craven once again whipped out that villain's smile – and shrugged. "Enlightenment is best discovered on one's own, my friend. Besides, some people only learn through pain."

"Pay the man!" shouted Halsted, storming through the exit. "Give him what he wants!"

The city treasurer nodded, wiping sick from his chin with a trembling hand. "The city of Tal... thanks you, master lich hunter."

He pulled out a pouch and tossed it into Craven's general direction, which in turn rushed forward and smoothly caught it, once again moving with uncanny speed. Echser swallowed hard. Like trapped lightning in a bottle...

It was still eerie seeing him move like that. All of the bounty killer's wounds were healed, had been even before they left the ghoul warren. It took no genius of his immersive mental caliber to attribute this to Hornbach's passing. Whatever Craven had done to the old man, it was definitely no mercy killing. Echser once again saw the wasted thing that Hornbach had become in his mind. Skin, and bones, and little else... Shuddering, he almost missed the panicked exodus of Tal's best and noblest.