NEVER SPLIT THE PARTY: The Adventures of the Creeping Bam (BOOK 4: The Hunt)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: VIFRI

This is a whole lot different to what we found at the last house, now we're poking round under the surface, 'least in a manner of speaking. The first real surprise came when we found the remains of what must have been the incident which led to the baffling remains we found outside getting ejected through the window. Granted, thanks to the fire it was hard to really make sense of it right away, we found ourselves having to look close and dig about in the waterlogged, charred environs to make real sense of what was there, but after some work we pieced an idea together. This was something a little different from the wreckage we'd been finding before, and in the last house. Eventually we worked out this was more like a battle.

It was the condition of the remains that really drove that home, and I don't know why I was surprised it was Faldabri who worked it out. Sure, the twisted, dishevelled mismatches of body parts and pieces of armour and broken weaponry were burned to a crisp and had curled up significantly in the heat, but once he pointed out the marks of blades I couldn't miss 'em. Somebody carved these things up good. Somebody who didn't die in the attempt ...

More than that, though, we found a trail too, leading deeper into the house from there, and it definitely looked worth following, so I set the tanuki to lead the way with his uncannily keen eyes and impressive sense of smell. 'Course I stayed close behind him the whole way, still not trusting the seeming safety of this place given what we'd already seen, and my hand was on Wirnur's hilt the whole time. On the surface, I s'pose, it was just in case I needed to draw in a hurry, but really it just made me feel better as we went deeper. Certainly it calmed my nerves a little whenever the floor under our feet would creak and warp in a particularly alarming manner due to the boards weakening after the fire. Every time I expected it to just break open and swallow us all before we could do anything to stop it.

After a time, the signs of fire faded and the corridors became cleaner, at least to an extent. We still found remains here and there, less frequent and more scattered now, as if these were the bodies of those who'd been cut down at a full run while fleeing, but there were other more interesting signs too. Most of all there was a strange scattering of blood drops soaked into the carpet underfoot, a trail clear enough to mark the way forward once Starkheart lit her flare and took over the lead. I still ain't been able to work out exactly what that's about yet.

That led us to a second major battle scene, but this one ain't been swallowed up by fire like the last, so it was a lot easier to get a good idea what happened here.

Most of the remains scattered about here are just the same kinds of torn, widely strewn corpses we been finding before now, but also other pieces which looked a whole lot more like more intact versions of the flattened, mangled thing we found outside. More intact in a relative way, that is, since they'd still all been cleaved and severed with what, to an educated eye like mine, soon became clear was the work of more than one particularly skilled warrior.

"It's interesting." Faldabri muses now as he leans down so low into his crouch his nose is almost close enough to touch the gruesome torn meat he's inspecting. It's a wonder the stench ain't repelled him already given how much more sensitive he is. I suspect his characteristic obsessive fascination is tempering any revulsion he might feel.

"What is?" I move back to him now, taking care as I step over the scattered gore. There's a lot of particularly nasty viscera in the mix here, a lot of guts and shredded organs or whatever else we have inside us that should never see the light of the world outside our skin. I seen some horrible stuff in my time, I should be hardened to it by now, but there's just something ... I dunno, significantly worse about this than anything I seen before.