Catchism: Vendetta

[catch]

It was a pain, course, gnawing, empty pain. It had begun even before the arm; it continued long after his arm was only a dull, throbbing thing, too distant to notice. He knew what caused it. Worm-mouths. Gnawing, chewing, eroding the very center of him. It weakened him. It made him susceptible. It made his brains scream, and beat at the prison of his mind. He knelt at the lapping, ice-cold winter waters of Silver Lake, and he plunges his arm into the cool. Just as Cherny had said. Cherny was a smart boy, and Catch was happy to know him.

No. They will not think of Cherny.

Flesh writhed in his mouth, stretching, the gentle comfort-stroke of pegged spider's legs against his cheek, upon his tongue. Catch's lips curl back, trying to push the spider out with his tongue, but it touched only air. She had long outgrown the safe warmth of his gums. And what was there left? A Wolf, a Fat Man. He looks up, his skin silvered by the waning mood, and It was there, lean, roting, stinking. Pus dribbled from it's weeping sores, it's eyes long gone milky, and white, until the wolf's eyes were the only Lights left in the sky.

The pounding of the pain became Words. Hurt. Hurt. He has told Cinnabar that Hurts shall be repayed in Hurts.

I won't.

His arm and his throat were fires, seared by a length of wolf-metal. He looked down, past the turgid, suggestive lapping of the water, and his arm was segmented, writhing, stretching a maw of tusked, piercing teeth.

It's not real, he shouted at the mange-bare dog-form. You're tricking me. You're tricking me. The Sky Lady made me free.

She showed you what you was. The Wolf-voice became something else, a distant tug of memory; coarse, unrefined, mocking, when in real life it had never mocked. And are you happy, marks and collars and all -

It's not a collar, he cried, his free, un-wormed hand clutching at the lodestone at his throat. He shut his eyes tight, and he - he squeezed, with fingers he shouldn't have, fingers as fat as sausages, Treadwell-fat, a pain so great that he could not breathe, his body seizing, falling, thrashing in the cold shallows of the Lake. He wept, but he could not tell that he did with fetid water rushing through his nose, so cold that it burned, filling his lungs before he could gain control, before he could right himself.

Am I going to drown?

Something gripped him by the collar of his shirt. It pulled. He could not imagine this, this bright-burning body. He thrashes, and he grabs, managing only a small cry of desperation. Don't leave me. Don't - Hands, small hands, pull, and Catch helps as he might, churning up great, muddy ruts, waist-to-knee-to-toe of caking, slick mud. He could not see. On hand and knees he retched up vast pools of water, and the small arms held him, fingers in his hair.

He couldn't smell or see, or taste. He opens his eyes to the face of a wolf. But the fur is wrong, all wrong; it is brindled, natural, brown. The eyes gleamed cold, and he felt the hands as they cupped his chin, his cheeks. Past the wolf's head was the body of a woman, and there is a crown of embers in her silken, black hair.

Her wolf's lips pull into a smile, at his confusion, at his being lost. She kisses his ruined head, and that kiss feels like the kiss of Pantha, rather than Kacela. She pulls him close, and he can hear the hot, wild blood running through her, his ear drumming with her heartbeat, his lips at the curve of her breast, and eyes unable to focus.

And why not? Why not? All cold, all searing pain in arm and lungs and worm-tooth, they were nothing in the comfort of a mother's arms. He did not fight it. He could not.

"Come, my darling," she whispers, tickling the furred sweep of his beastly ear, and her voice was Solena's, though the words were more ancient than even an elf's.

[catch]

"Da! Da!"

If Myrkenites were not so stubborn, then all this good, loamy farmland would have gone to waste, lain fallow and useless. The crop has been plucked, for the most part. Carts of it going to town, there to spread to even further places, towns and cities that were naught but a speck on a map. Farmer Gibson's family had cut trees, cut sod. They had their coins, hoarded inside walls and in burying-spots. Farmer Gibson himself though darkly of it, for there was rumor of mercenaries and war, and if there was a thing to drive them from land, it was War.

The crops had been plucked and dug, and now there was only their own, personal stock that needed tending, the girls pickling what may be pickled, and the boys looking after the stock. Good stock. Time for slaughtering was near, and he'd have to prepare for that -

"DA!"

Gibson's thoughts shook themselves from War and the worries of Winter, for last winter had been hard, with the Rot. He grunts, and picks up his milk-bucket.

"Wots'it, boy?"

He said it casual, but another look at his youngest gave him a sense of dread. The boy was white, and Gibson knew that he wasn't an imaginative lad.

"All th'pigs, Da, the hogs -!"

Dammit. Wolves? With a round curse - and a 'Don't repeat that to Ma' - Gibson put his pail down, and took off to the sty. He saw it soon enough, but the boy stammered.

"All of 'em, Da, jus' lurchin' aroun' like that -"

Damn. Damn. Mercenaries and all. It had to be. Farmer Gibson felt the anger rise in him, for while he was a practical man, and knew what a beast's fate might be, that did not mean he did not pity them. All his pigs, ever one, was grunting and whimpering in pain. Some wallowed, thick legs stuck at awkward angles; others attempted to flop about.

Some bastard - bastards - had gone through and broken the legs of his pigs.

And only then did he notice that their eyes were gone.

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"Hold on, laddo," Gibson grunts. He had lost a good day's work, but he wouldn't delay the slaughter, not with the poor things the way they were. Hot blood spattered into the bucket, and with an expert's touch, he spun the jerking hog from it's roof-chain so that he'd not miss a drop. The poor things were so addled, so pain-ridden, that they had not put up any sort of fight; even now, they made no noise, and for the first time in his life, Gibson missed the screams.

The others were already dead, and his boy had ridden back with News. Some men's livestock had suffered the same fate. For others, nothing amiss had happened, and none of them -none! - had heard nothing, seen nothing. Gibson could be angry at that, but he had heard nothing, either, and what was louder than a pig in pain, or fright?

Gibson pushed the pig away, once the blood was gone, and his Oldest took command, Gibson proud to see that his youngest, while pale, wasn't fussing or carrying on. His first time, helping with the slaughter, and Gibson couldn't be more proud -

"Oh gods!"

The oldest, with ease, had slit the first pig from throat to crotch. But there were no intestines. There was no meat. To all their horror, what fell from the pig was a writhing, hideous mass, a dribbling of fat, blood-black worms.

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Winter was coming. The other meats could be found, where they might, but enough of the harvest had been mutilated, impossibly despoiled, that even the Rich would find bacon, and ham, and even chicken and cattle, almost too expensive for their tables as the more fortunate farmers hoarded what they had.

That night, a muddy form crept back into the Dagger. He went to his room, and he scrubbed the mud and blood from his skin. In the forest, on the farm-fields, are the criss-crossed paths of dead and dying nature-worms.

[Khalika]

Room of a 1000 excrements...

While Catch scubs at mud and blood.....

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Whatever Tennant had made her consume only gave her brief respite from Solena's "Gift" . She awoke in a Cesspit of her own making. No Clothing remained only the bandage upon her chest was drenched in all imagined human fluids. Old and fresh excrements mix with the putridness of her most recent re-meeting of bile and food and together they pool within the crevices of the sheets. slight ripples as the Gypsy moves..Bile fueled stream follows the sheet over the bed as they drip...drip..drip to the floor.

Buckets and pots and Basions upright and toppled, Scatter the room in all manner of fullness.

Cesspools within Cesspools.

She has not much of a mind to care in her few brief moments of lucidicity as she rolls over the bed to drop to the floor only to find the floor equal to the bed. Something things are noted though strands of swaet soak hair crustled to dreads by regurgitation and blured eyes that are reddened from the physically violent nature of vomiting, a few fresh pots and the window opened, A pitcher filled with something that had not started within her is searched for..a trembling hand grasping for the cool recepticale. upon her knee leaning against the bed the water is crisp upon dried crack lips the vomit fuled spittled had dried and been covered by a more intense glaze..The water is cool down a throat that is scarred and redden. For stomach had emptied hours ago and now she merely vomite the acidic bile green residue that the human body produces. It is a course and harsh liquid, it burns the top of her mouth and throat..the water yes it is cool and needed as she is so weakened from the loss of fluids she must force this effort hourly.

The water has barly entered when she is heavy once more, back lurching over ,the Pitcher thrown haplessly to the floor. The precious pure water streaming to meet the Dregs of the room floor. Followed by the Gypsy's head with a loud thud as returning to the bed was not in cards...