The Judgement Of Divinity (TMOE #2)

Chapter 31: Alone

While memories of his childhood were blurry, Lucius was rather certain he had not decapitated his parents.

"It was just a cut, right?" He looked over his shoulder to address the head of his mother as he dragged it over dusty cobblestones. "Just so your throat stopped working."

"And bled out," his father filled in, and Lucius looked back at his other hand where he was carrying said person's head like a bag.

"Feels like your head used to be bigger than this," he mumbled as he raised his hand to look his father in the eyes. Then he looked back at his mother's head again, and noticed how much his arm ached from having pulled such a massive boulder-like creation so far.

How far?

"And you used to be smaller," he commented before shifting his stare forward. "... Where was I taking you now again?"

To bury us, of course," his mother said, now having turned into an actual boulder. "If you can."

"I think you'll find I'm quite proficient in burying." Lucius' voice was dry. "Should be fine."

"Oh so you are capable of using your talents." The boulder shrugged somehow. "Took you long enough."

Lucius gritted his teeth.

"At least I bury people voluntarily. I did not volunteer to have parts cut off just to sing."

"Perhaps we cut the wrong part then," his bag-shaped father suggested. "Should have taken your tongue and had you shut up, if there's no other use for it anyway."

Lucius opened his mouth to reply, but quickly realised no words came out and that there was nothing to use for words left in there.

"Oh, very nice," the Blight cat said with Lucius' voice as it suddenly appeared on top of his shoulder. "Just cut out inconveniences until you have your perfect life."

"Seems like it's a family trait," Lucius' mother said with the same harsh voice as her son, though as Lucius looked back it turned out she had disappeared, and instead he was dragging the old cart from when he'd buried Claudia and Mabel.

"Oh so that's where we're going," the Blight muttered, and Lucius faced forward again just to stumble over a rock much smaller than his boulder-mother. It seemed the path leading to the small lake remained as uneven as ever.

"Sure is a nicer place than the hole you stuck me in," a new voice said, and Lucius looked back again to notice Phil's blood-dyed corpse on the cart. "What the Waste was up with that dull chunk of rock you decided was an appropriate tombstone?"

"So many stones," the Blight whispered in Lucius' place, and its host wrinkled his nose. "And you should be grateful we even bothered with a tombstone. You even got a grim to watch over you."

"What an honour." Phil's corpse rolled its eyes until they fell out. "Not like anyone buried in a cemetery gets that treatment."

"At least you got a cemetery," another voice said, and Lucius blinked as Claudia's corpse had joined the cart. "I got a Wexian funeral."

"Better than the Siren's maw," the Blight protested, and Lucius nodded in agreement with his voice. "This is a gorgeous place, and meant a lot to us."

He gestured to the forest where several Blight cats had appeared to jump among the trees in a long line.

"They didn't even bother with a funeral for me."

The Blight cat uttered an 'ugh' and Lucius emphasised the reaction with a disgusted wrinkling of his nose as they both acknowledged Ravi's mauled body on the now small pile of corpses.