City of Light:Zared and Osie: Siege Mentality

Osie watched him through the night as he thrashed and his teeth clacked against each other, he had started shaking and throwing fits shortly after she had finished sewing him together and sharing her blood with him. During one of the slow moments when he wasn't spasming she noticed darkness leaking from underneath his goggles, the same thick black liquid that hard been seeping from his chest before so she removed them thinking he was still further injured. There was a popping noise as she pulled them free and her hands, as well as his face, were covered in the black liquid.

She brought the lamp close so that she could survey the damage and found two pools of the liquid filling his eye cavity. Setting the lantern aside she crossed her legs and gently put his head across her knees so she could get a better view, then taking the greatest care she could she ran her fingers around the outer edges of the two indentations, and felt nothing amiss. Taking his head in her hands she tilted his head to the right and let the fluid run from the eye sockets, then brought his head back right again. She had watched the fluid roll out and pour down the side of his face, she could still see the wet stains there, but the sockets were full again with that thick black blood.

This time she began from the stop and slowly followed the curve of the socket down into the liquid. She progressed barely a hair's breadth at a time, but soon her thumb up to the second knuckle was submerged and she felt nothing at all, just a vague warmth and a feeling of emptiness. Going as quickly to leave as she entered she began to withdraw her fingers from his head, it seemed to take forever but eventually her hands were free. She lifted his head from her lap and lay it back on the floor.

Very slowly she moved around him, her entire attention on his body while she collected the bottle and length of tubing which were packed up in on of the saddle bags. She backed out of the room and then quickly went down the stairs to tie the bags back onto the bike, she was able to work quickly this at least was old hat to her; she had been prepping bikes for long trips since she could tie a knot so she continued about this mindless ritual.

Her revelry was broken by a banging on the door followed in short order by another. She jerked her head to face it in time for another crashing boom and she watched it shake in it's frame; whatever was outside was trying to bash it's way in, but why now? Why hadn't they heard them hammering all along? As soon as she asked the question she had her answer, and she turned and quickly walked out of the room, leaving the hammering behind her. When she reached the top of the stairs she sat for a few moments and listened as the pounding grew less frequent at first, and finally stopped all together.

She went back into the room and giving the pardoner a wide berth she went over the the windows and looked outside. The creatures were still there milling about on all fours, occasionally they would bump into each other; she watched this happen a few times and each time the result was the same. Which ever creature happened to be larger would begin brutalizing and beating on the smaller one, eventually others would join in and the smaller creature would be torn apart and devoured by the remaining ones. In a few moments another corpse would wander into the square and begin milling about with the others. This whole process took place four times throughout the night, and just as the sun was beginning to come up she heard him being to stir behind her.

Turning she pulled the small, large caliber, hold out pistol she kept in her waistband and took a few steps away from him. When he was still again she started to relax until he spoke.
“What happened?”
“Before or after we got here?” She asked, leveling the pistol at him.
“Put that thing away Osie, if I wanted to see you dead I wouldn't have stopped those things from getting out of Coopers.” He said tiredly and began to sit up.
“Which things would that be ... whatever your name is.”
“Zared.”
“Zared, fine. Are you talking about the creatures that have been milling outside all night? Or is there something else to worry about.” She asked, weapon not moving.
“It must be something else, unless they survived the fire. “ He paused and looked down. “Where is my robe, and what is ... this?” He asked poking the sutures, then wincing in response to his own action.
She spared a glance out the window and saw that the creatures were growing less and less agitated. “Your robe is in the corner and those are what's keeping you alive right now, though that was an old wound I don't know how you went so long without tending too it.”
He grunted as he stood up and walked slowly to the corner and picked up the robe. “Two days.”
“What? What was two days?”
“The spear wound, it was two days ago, the morning after I pardoned you two men attacked me.” He paused again while he struggled into the robe. “What do I owe you for your services?”
“Answers.” She spat back at him. “I'm not some camp girl to be toyed with. I want answers. What are those things? Where'd they come from?”
“Calm yourself, deep breaths.” He said dismissively. “I'm not sure what they are .. exactly. I know they're the bodies of people who died from the plague that swept this town; I'm assuming by the way that the sacrifice was no longer at the crossroad?”
“Oh he was there, and he tried to attack me, but I shot him and now he's really dead, I think. But what you're saying is that somehow whatever killed them brought them back to life?” The gun was all but forgotten now and she gestured with it casually.
“What I'm saying is that I don't know ... yet. But I'll help you get on your way and then continue my investigation here. Are they still out there?” He asked.
“No.”
“Good then lets get you on your way.” He replied.
“No. I mean I'm not going anywhere, I'm staying right there I want to see what the deal is with them as well. Besides, you're family now whether either of us likes it.” She said turning towards the window.
The sun had finished rising and as she looked outside she saw that the creatures had all collapsed in the street. “They've stopped.” She said and walked out of the room tucking the pistol back at her waist under the jacket.
Zared followed her out and down the stairway to the front door where he helped move aside the large table, sure enough as the stepped out into the cool morning air the bodies were all laying still and unmoving on the ground; scattered pieces from the one she had seen torn apart littered the area.
“We should continue the work then.” He said after a minute.
“How's that?”
“I'll start the furnace at the Smithy back up, you find a cart and gather gathering the bodies. If you want to stay with me, you need to trust me and you need to pull your own weight.”
“That's fine,” she replied. “But what makes you think I can't work the forge?”
“It's not a question of being capable, it will simply be more effective for me to do it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You're too skinny.” He said setting off across the square.

Osie found a cart behind the house that was serviceable and started by loading up the bodies, and parts of bodies in the square. Meanwhile Zared had gathered more wood and added it to the smoldering fire from yesterday; by the time she arrived with the first cartload it was roaring mightily. While he pronounced the blessing that was growing familiar to him she helped load the bodies into the furnace, then left to try and find more victims while he set to the bellows.

Plumes of smoke went up over the village from the five chimneys of the blacksmith shop and the two didn't stop working till the sun began to set. During the day Osie had begun to open and explore houses looking for more bodies; unlike the holy man, who she learned had been named Casiel, many of the others didn't have time to clean out their houses so along with the bodies she began collecting any serviceable firearms along with casks of oil and wine. When night time came again they had brought all the scavenged supplies inside and put the table in front of the door and window on the first floor, then immediately made there way upstairs to the front room.

When they had left in the morning the room had been covered in stains of the dried black fluid that moved through her companion, now though they had all disappeared, in a few places were piles of grey dust, but there was no sign he had ever bled inside this house. Osie noticed that the stains on her armour where the blood had pooled was gone as well, though her fingers were still stained a deep black.

They ate a supper of dried meat and wine with little in the way of conversation, short of agreeing to each take a watch during the night. Zared slept first while Osie stood guard and worked on cleaning and repairing the pistols that they had lost the night before. Both were filthy and the strangely familiar one that he had been using looked to have have been fired several times without cleaning. She shook her head and sucked her teeth while she worked, she didn't know if it was fear or too much faith that kept people from maintaining their machines. Her companion wasn't a stupid person, she knew that, so why hadn't he bothered to clean the pistol; it was surprising really because the machining was exquisite and it looked to generally have been taken very good care of until recently.

Another two dozen creatures showed up in the square that night and acted just as the others had with their aimless milling about and sudden spastic violence. Towards the end of her watch Osie went down the stairs and almost as soon as she reached the bottom the pounding on the door started; and just like the night before when she went back to the top of the stairs it stopped. She stopped and began to walk back to the room when she plowed right into Zared and let out an ear piercing shriek.

“What were you doing?” His voice was still thick with sleep.
“:There are more out there, different ones than last night. I wanted to see if they knew we were here... they do.”
He chuckled briefly, “Do you know when there is meat roasting in the next camp over?”
“Of course, but what does that have to do with anything?”
“So do they. Now try and get some sleep, I hope your dreams are better than mine were.”

She curled up on a corner of the room, a blanket from the bed wrapped around her while Zared perched in the window watching the creatures skulk around. He retrieved his bag and took out his book and stylus and sat there in the moonlight flipping through it's pages for a while. Finally he closed the book and opened it at the end, here were words written in a whole different way, their symbols seemed to creep and lurch across the page, a suggestive movement not unlike the creatures below.

He turned forward until he found the next open section of page and then removed his goggles carefully, being sure not to spill any of the fluid that was in the eye cups. Dipping his stylus in the well of the lens he began to inscribe more of these characters, this time the writing was reversed though. He began at the end of a memory and the symbols grew of their own volition inscribing the sin into the page with the Pardoners blood. As he wrote he felt himself growing fainter, more distant as he selected the memories to imprison here, they lurched and clawed and tried to fight their way off the paper.

By the time the sun rose he had purged himself of the worst of the memories he had taken, and for now they were safe. He watched them for a while, twisting and writhing on the pages of the book, unwholesome and all together un-appealing in their base manner. He had ten pages or so of the book filled with them; his Will and the sacred language that was born into him during those months in the tower of the Eye bound them there. He had released some in the past, taken the words from the pages and eaten them, brought their power and their forbidden knowledge into him but those were dark and dire times.

In the far corner of the room Osie began to stir as more grey light poured in past him, so Zared closed the book and tied it shut; pausing only a moment to look upon the monsters he had penned there before putting it back into his bag. The stylus joined it and he bent over to place the goggles back on, tyeing them securely and making sure none of the fluid escaped. How long before she asked about it he wondered, and what could he tell her since even he didn't have answers.


See I warned you, aweful aweful dialogue. It's probably the weakest point of my writing.