To Study the Dead

[Vivian]

Vivian trotted along the streets, making sure to keep half an eye on Caro. The poor man had slid right off his back on the first try mounting, and Bara’s hulking form wasn’t the smoothest ride even with the sinewy grace of the worm added. That said, he didn’t much mind giving him a ride. He was faster on four feet than two and knew exactly where they were going. Thankfully, it wasn’t somewhere heavily populated. It was, for lack of better terms, an industrial dump on the outskirts of town.

Big cities produced big waste, and while much of the paper, fabric and wood trash was burned, anything that was animal or food related ended up here. It was a large pit carved into the earth, with appropriate wooden walkways for people visiting to dump their trash from. Vivian walked down a ramp meant for carts, though he had to lower his head and walk carefully to distribute his weight.

The dumping grounds were cloying. The cast off bones of chickens, geese, turkeys, pigs, goats, and cattle were everywhere. Some of them chewed from a noble’s table and others were just cast offs from the butcher. Offal and vegetables disappeared fast here owing to the small army of rats, worms, and other detritivores. Other than that, whole bodies were the rule here. Several dozen cart horses lay across the piles. Some of them had just been old, others had slipped and broken legs, others had died of sheer overwork. Vivian’s withers shuddered at the sight of them. Without him, Bara likely would have met the same fate.

Vivian decided to help Caro dismount. Slipping and falling here could be deadly. He had heard tales of people scrounging around for food or useful items, and being sucked down into piles of gore without anyone to get them out. Rats and loose dogs openly attacked people here, as fresh meat was much preferable to rotten. Hell, the various crime lords of the slums dumped their refuse here too. As someone who had spent most of his winters here, with the decomposing flesh steaming warmth into his frozen fingers and toes, Vivian was well acquainted with the dangers of the dump.

His long, fleshy tail curled around Caro’s middle. A soft, slimy tail tip slid down his front and between his legs, cupping him briefly. After their earlier flirtation it was hard to resist at least evaluating the goods. Then the tail tip wormed under Caro, between his legs and up his back. He hefted Caro off him securely, lifting him and depositing him safely on the walkway behind Vivian. He turned his head to make sure he was alright, and noticed something lunging for Caro’s heels.

That white, netlike tongue shot out and wrapped around the rat, pulling it back into Vivian’s mouth. The squirming bulge disappeared down his throat, kicking and struggling. With a little flex of his neck and the dull popping noise of an animal that had been squeezed a bit too much, the bulge continued its journey into his stomach quietly.

Vivian changed back, and made sure to stay up right as quickly as possible. He didn’t want to be at eye level with any more rats or dogs. He saw a few canines poking around the place, watching them distrustfully. Cats slunk here and there looking for fish guts. Rats were everywhere, along with black flies and a stench so powerful most noble servants came in clothing they could burn afterward.

“Welcome to my summer place. I’m still cleaning it.” Vivian joked. “But we should find something you can use here. If not, dying animals and the dogs are always here too if you look.”

[Arkash]

Though Arkash was supernaturally resilient and able to regenerate mundane, superficial wounds in seconds, the speed at which they went through the city did worry him. Not because they galloped or anything of the sort, but Arkash had no control over where they were going. It wasn’t as though he could just slap a pair of reins on the beast and guide him in the direction he wanted, either. Vivian had a mind of his own, regardless of where his head might have been tugged.

Eyes followed them through the streets, the burn of their gazes almost felt as though it left marks on his skin. Though he did his best to ignore them, it weighed at the forefront of his mind with all the implications that were sure to follow in a place like Amoren. He knew it was the exotic nature of his steed that drew attention, but it still sat uncomfortably on his shoulders that he’d stood out from the mundane; something Arkash often wished to avoid.

There was a certain smell within the city’s limits that Arkash often kept his distance from. There was an abundance of death in the direction that the scent wafted from, a site that Arkash knew to avoid lest he lose himself there. The stench of decaying meat intensified the closer they came, and Arkash began to tremble subtly as they neared the source of that scent he’d avoided. When he finally halted his breath through his sensitive nose, he began to compose himself with deep breaths in his lungs, and his mangled restraint gradually recovered.

When they arrived at the source, Arkash understood why such a scent made him wild. Bodies of beasts, bones, and various scraps of decaying meat lay scattered all through the mounds of waste that were dumped in the dug dirt pit.

It was paradise.

Beasts didn’t often touch the sides when met with a Dranoch’s unfathomable hunger, but if he fed from the pit without pause for a day or two, Arkash was sure to push his evolution further than if he’d eaten a squadron of knights.

Arkash was almost in a daze as they descended the ramp into the pit, eyes hazy with restraint as they drew ever near the source. Really, when Vivian described a dumping ground, what had Arkash expected? Not Eden, not a garden where every fruit was forbidden with great consequence.

As the worm helped him dismount, Arkash barely roused from the stupor of his forced restraint. He came to stand on the gore-soaked earth with legs that momentarily buckled before he caught his weight and leaned on the beast.

He could taste it. The scent was so potent that it invaded his other senses and made his eyes water as a result. blocking breath through his nose wasn’t enough.

The hand he rested on Vivian’s flank tensed a little while Arkash spiraled in graphic, demented fantasies. Utterly lost, he didn’t notice as the rat snuck upon him; all his focus was spent calibrating and adjusting to the temptation of his environment.

The only thing to steal his attention was the sudden propulsion of the worm’s tongue, as it snatched the rat and dragged it into the hold of its mouth. Needle-point irises stared with demonic intent while he watched the beast feed. His teeth stood on edge as the pit in his stomach deepened to the endless black void; Valteran’s call for sacrifice.

A deep breath saw him stabilize long after Vivian had already returned to his human form, and Arkash found himself holding the boy by the shoulder.

“Sawrry,” he said quite nasally as he let go of the younger man and wiped his eyes dry. “…The smell’s burnin’ my eyes,” he explained his spaciness. “I dunno how ‘ew stan’ it ‘ere,” he said with the briefest grin.

His mouth shut periodically, and he spat the flavor from his palette more than once as he gradually desensitized himself to the space and relaxed.

A deep exhale and a stretch overhead saw him expel some of the tensions that came with the mind-crushing desire to feed, and he shook a little as he dropped the pressure in his shoulders and rolled them while his bag hung at his side. “Yeah,” he agreed. “Something fresh is better; the less decay the more chance I’ll see the whole picture.”

He still refrained from breathing through his nose, but not with quite as much emphasis as he had when they first arrived. Again, he wiped his eyes dry as he stood on his tiptoes to peer over the mounds of disposal that surrounded them, and did his best to discern the least deteriorated carcasses. Then, he found something.

Further down was a mound of something that inflated and deflated. From what he could tell, it was some sort of large four-legged creature of brown coat and undiscernible features. “There,” Arkash said with a point of his finger. “I think that thing’s alive,” he said with some brief tremor in his extended extremity.

He lowered it without acknowledgment, then carefully navigated his footing through the valley of disposed organics. He tested every step in case he impaled his foot on a broken bone or something of the sort. On the way, he paused to look at the younger man occasionally and finally asked a question that was mired with his focus on the task at hand.

“How many Entente have you met?” he asked, in what easily could have been construed as casual conversation. “Is Degare your first clash with the nobility here or..?” There was a purpose for his asking, a question that would open the way to a line of query he wished to take the boy through.

At the site was a large draft horse of mottled white and brown that laid on its side. The stallion was withered, stomach sunk beneath its protruding ribs which slowly inflated and deflated in the pile. The cause for its disposal was apparent; not because of age, but an obvious fracture that pointed its leg in a different direction, swollen, discolored, and festering with infection at the site of the break. The beast's eyes were partly open while it laid there, breathing shallowly.

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[Vivian]

Vivian felt a little sheepish given the looks they had been getting on the ride over. He got the impression, just from Caro’s uncomfortable way of sitting on his back, that the man didn’t like the attention. Vivian loved attention, but he could definitely see how the open stares and whispers could make his new Necromancer friend uncomfortable. He hurried them along, trying to keep his strides as smooth as possible for Caro’s benefit. After all he got the idea he wasn’t an expert equestrian.

As they approached the dumping ground something odd was seizing the Necromancer. He looked…dazed. Enraptured, struck by the sight and smell of the place. Vivian wasn’t bothered by the smell anymore; his very vocation requires a lot of interaction with revolting objects. His poor friend was trembling like a leaf, and taking deep breaths like men sniffing at a woman’s perfume. It became very clear to Vivian that bringing a Necromancer to such a place may have been ill advised. Who knew what Caro was capable of with so many loose materials about? Sure, dig deep enough and there was some of the richest soil in Amoren, cultured and nurtured by the worms, beetles and flies that thrived here, but that must have been ten feet deep at least.

Above that rich soil? It was all corpses and rotting meat. Vivian leaned in to Caro when he stumbled. There was a walkway they were standing on, made of wood so that citizens could dump toward the middle instead of simply sliding corpses down the sides. It hadn’t used to be there, but the pit had taken on a distinctive bowl shape in the past that had proved more dangerous than it’s worth. So, the city had erected some (rather dubious in spots) wooden walkways and ramps down into the pit.

Vivian nudged Caro with the soft frills of his head, concerned. The Necromancer looked completely and utterly lost. Gods, he looked like Degare after a particularly good orgasm; far away. Even when Vivian returned to himself, Caro was still holding his shoulder.

He knew one thing; he didn’t buy Caro’s words in the slightest. “Oh please. I’ve put far more disgusting things in my mouth than this smell. Besides, this place saves lives every winter; the decay never quite freezes over because decomposing bodies make warmth. Throw a tent over the gore and you’ve got yourself a heated, squishy bed. That is, if you’re okay with the rats sharing with with you.” Vivian noted with a grin. “You don’t look disgusted. You look like you just came in your pants.”

Thankfully, conversation was helping bring Caro back. Vivian patted the man and rubbed his shoulders. “Contain yourself, you can always come back. Just don’t bother the locals; some people live here full time you know. Making trinkets and tools out of bones, or snatching up the fresh stuff to sell.” He mentioned. Being here really did remind Vivian of how far he had come. He didn’t have to punch people over a dying pig here just to live through the winter anymore.

How was he ever going to adjust when Degare got his mark and turned him out into the street?

Vivian followed Caro into the mire, thankful he was wearing his old pants. He’d have to burn these. Actually, he could place bets on the maid having him thrown into the nearest body of water and stripped bare before ever touching her immaculate floors. He nodded sadly as they approached the horse. Poor thing. It was in too much shock to feel pain, but Vivian had every intention of putting it down once Caro was finished. “Just…do what you need to do quickly. Poor things had a rough enough life. Just because someone comes from poor circumstances doesn’t make them disposable.” He muttered, kneeling down to stroke the horse’s neck.

“Yeah. Degare’s my first brush with the Entente. I got desperate. Went two days without food and I was losing my mind. I broke into his pantry, and got caught. I’m fairly sure he was planning on skinning me alive when he caught the mark between my shoulders. He wants it. So it’s a…sort of truce. He can’t kill me because I have something he wants. I get clean clothes, food and lodging. He’s teaching me to read, too. I…don’t know how long it will last. Soon I’ll be back here. I’m pretty sure he plans on either killing me or throwing me back into the streets. Entente don’t care about street trash.”

He couldn’t help the bitterness in his voice. Perhaps some foolish part of him still thought he could ascend above his circumstances and become actually employed by Degare. Get a real job, maybe a home for himself and Bara. No, as much as he wanted to believe the opposite, maybe Degare was a monster like the rest of them who would throw him out without as much as a by your leave.

[Arkash]

Self-control wasn't something Dranoch were often associated with, quite the opposite, in fact. The Blighted were known to stop in the middle of a battle to feed upon their opponent, thus making themselves vulnerable to attack.

The only reason Arkash had survived as long as he had was thanks to the work of his progenitor, who stressed self-control and the specific selection of his prey so that he wouldn't; be tempted to pause and feed on every carcass he happened across. Those teachings proved infinitely valuable while he stood on those wooden crosswalks.

Though Vivian's observation of his reaction to the scene was much closer to the truth than what he tried to portray, Arkash couldn't help but raise his brows at the expression that the site saved lives in the winter. "...Does it really get that cold here in the Frost?" Arkash quizzed as he wiped his eyes clean. As much as he'd experienced, Daravin was warmer in its winter than Lorien was in its summer. He couldn't imagine any of Daravin's residents had experienced anything akin to freezing within their borders. "You'll have to take a trip to Nivenhain sometime; they have snow up there for three seasons out of the year."

"...Is it that obvious?" Arkash asked when he was done clearing his eyes and unclogging his sinuses. He supposed he could at least pass off his apparent excitement at the scene with the nature of his occupation while he proceeded down the wooden ramp and embarked on the mounds of corpses.

While Vivian was correct that he could come back, Arkash wouldn't be able to do so without bothering the locals, not if he wanted to feed. "...Right," he agreed unconvincingly.

There, he delivered the first question in his roster, had Vivian ever tangled with the Entente before Degare?

Before the question was answered, Vivian expressed pity toward the fallen horse and brushed down its neck while Arkash knelt beside it and began to dig through his possessions for the correct tool.

From the bag, Arkash drew a small Scalpel while he did his best to avoid looking at the beast's face, at least until Vivian spoke a little too close to home.

Arkash stayed there for a moment with the scalpel in hand, looking at the withered beast's sunken stomach while he considered... Then sighed. From his bag, he collected another instrument, a small circular blade that was attached to a long spindly handle, almost like some sort of wooden writing quill.

As it happened, Vivian went on to explain that he had not tangled with the nobility before Degare. The circumstances of their meeting brought a smile to the Necromancer's features. "Did you often go days without eating?" Arkash asked. "It's impressive you managed to keep the food down," he commented as he neared the underside of the beast, then pressed the tip of his scalpel to the space beneath what he imagined to be the clavicle, and carefully dragged the tip width-wise across the section of the beast's torso. The steed barely reacted; its chest lifted and fell a touch deeper than it otherwise had been.

"I see..." he continued in thought as he proceeded with the long cut along the beast's sternum, and over its stomach. "You're really just hanging around until you're strong enough to give him your mark of control, then?"

"...It's not just the Entente," Arkash said when Vivian proposed that the Entente didn't care about street trash. "Everywhere you go, the nobility steps on the poor... Which is ironic given it's your business and labor that keeps them afloat." Arkash was quite plain in the way he spoke, as though his words were fact. He glanced at the boy then as he finished peeling open the underside of the horse. "...Who says you're street trash? Is it Degare or are you resigning yourself to that?" He asked as he retrieved a needle and thread, and stitched the flap of the horse's skin and adipose tissue to the beast's side so that it stayed open without his aid. The curved needle made short work of the task, and he rolled up his sleeves after setting his tools down and pressed the blunt end of the stick into his thigh.

"...And have you accepted your fate of being tossed back out onto the streets? Or do you plan to remain in the Lord's employ?" Arkash offered with a raise of his brow, only briefly looking up from the work of his hands to get a look at the younger man. "I suppose I'm asking what your intentions are, Vivian. Where are you going?" he continued as he pushed his bare arms into the pits of the horse's opened belly, and ducked down to get a better look at what he was sorting through.

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[Vivian]

“Try enduring a mild winter without shoes when it starts raining.” Vivian said wryly. “Trust me. It doesn’t take much to get hypothermic.” Rain and wind could chill a man faster than most people thought; especially the poor. Threadbare clothing felt like wearing nothing at all. He rubbed his neck a moment, recalling squatting near a fire with the rest of the homeless in an alleyway. Getting as close as he dared and all of them feeding the fire to avoid that horrid redness in their hands and feet.

He shook off the memory. He might very well be returning to that horrid little campfire in Frost but right now he had a warm bed and a seat near the fire whenever he wanted. Though, it was odd. Even the cook seemed to get mad at him when he laid on the floor near the oven to be near the heat. Apparently laying around like a cat wasn’t approved of in the Veir Socorro’s home.

He smiled a bit at Caro and patted his shoulder before they jumped into the muck. “Well if I ever look intently at an animal like I’ve completely lost focus of everything else, you know why. It feels like that. Like you’re taking everything in, and processing too much at once. Or, as I mentioned before, you’re coming in your pants.” He joked with a wry smirk.

Any joking mood was gone, however, as Caro cut into the horse’s belly. Vivian stroked the animal’s neck and face, trying to bring it some measure of comfort. He watched as the Necromancer cut along the chest of the horse, then between its front legs and along its belly. “I didn’t keep it down. Everything that was stolen got returned in a vase on my way out of his office.” He muttered. “You should consider getting something for the pain when you do this…cutting something open while it’s alive.”

Vivian watched in grim fascination as skin was pulled back, exposing fresh muscle. Twitching, alive, even if the horse was at death’s door. Vivian was fascinated. He leaned in close, watching where the dark red ropes of flesh connected to the bone like scaffolding on a building. He looked at the wide expanse of belly muscle, how just a wall of thick meat was all that protected the animal. Once Caro pierced that, it was organs, and they came out in a jumble. He sucked in a breath and looked Caro in the eyes when the necromancer looked up.

“I mean, he is teaching me more control. What the names of things are, and the books tell me a lot.” Vivian said quietly. “But yes, once I give him the mark and help him recover there’s no logical reason to keep me around. I want to stay, I really do.” He looked down, helping pin a section of the muscle back so that Caro could get a better look at the shining purplish intestines. The stomach was withered, as the horse hadn’t eaten in several days. Caro was a strange one, but Vivian liked him. He liked him a lot. But he still couldn’t shake the feeling he was about to propose something.

“I don’t want to leave.” Vivian insisted. “I want to stay under Degare’s employ. But he’s not a man that keeps useless things around. I want to learn more about my magic and…change my circumstances. I don’t want to be poor and powerless anymore.” He leaned in closer to get a better look at Caro’s stitches. Was this how the man joined flesh together? With a needle and thread? Would such a thing stay permanently? He knew the horse was dying, but if it lived, would such flesh knit together eventually?

“Would Degare employ me…? I…I mean the reason I’m being so slow in giving him his mark isn’t just because I want to keep the lodgings. I’m worried about him. Malformation requires empathy for another living creature, not just knowledge. To study something I have to understand it on some intimate level. Is he even ready for that? He’s so closed off.”

[Arkash]

Something for the pain...

Arkash had thus far not worried about any sort of numbing agents or painkilling drugs for his patients. Vivian was right, of course. If he was going to practice on regular people, they would likely want some degree of medicine to dull the pain. How a Necrodoctor wouldn't have considered that already was... Suspicious. "...It's in the final stretch," Arkash reasoned. "I doubt I could even make it swallow anything at this point anyway," he spoke with a gesture of his head to the beast.

Vivian had thrown up all he'd stolen from Degare earlier in the season, to which Arkash nodded in understanding. It was difficult to keep rich food down when one's body had entered starvation mode.

As Arkash sorted through and measured the entrails, he came to discover that the intestines were much longer than he'd given them credit for. The digestive tract made up most of the space and weight of all the organs inside, including the enormous stomach beneath the diaphragm, with impressive kidneys to boot. The stomach was withered, but easy to imagine what it might have looked like in its healthy state. Arkash stared impressed while he questioned the boy.

"Thank you," he passed as Vivian pulled a section of muscle back.

Though Vivian perhaps didn't agree with Arkash's declaration on the state of nobility, Arkash took no offense. It wasn't often he encountered like-minded people.

And of course, Vivian didn't want to leave. He expressed that he wished to remain with the Veir. Who wouldn't in that situation? "You have a funny way of showing it," Arkash spoke his observation as he looked up at the boy. "You talk as though you've already given up," he said with a nod as he returned his attention to the mounds of guts that piled before him. With a curl of his nose, he positioned himself tactfully, then gut the digestive tract from the beast on the lower end of the cavity he'd created.

What Vivian said next, however, brought him to furrow both brows in confusion. "Closed off?" he asked. "...Haven't you slept with him?" Was Vivian perhaps describing someone else? Another Degare at the estate? Unlikely.

"...It's possible he could make you his Valran," he added on the subject of being employed by Degare. "But you'd have to learn the ways of the nobility; you can't be... A liability," he said with a frown. As he cut away the stomach, all the organs came free with a splash of the enzymes in its gut. Arkash curled his nose, then wiped his hand on the corpse they stood upon. "Do you know the game they play? The Candor?"

"Since I met you this morning, I count you've committed maybe three Taboos; acts that supposedly bring ruin to a house in the culture of Daravin's high society." Arkash cleared his throat then as he collected his bag with a gore-caked arm, then stepped around the beast as it began to quickly expire. "If you want to stay intermingled with the Entente, you need to be able to give up a part of yourself, some of what makes you human... At least some of the time."

As he knelt beside the horse's head, he brought a hand to rest on the beast's neck. "...How badly do you want that?"

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[Vivian]

Vivian supposed Caro was right. The poor thing likely couldn’t swallow anything, much less hear or feel anything happening. Shock would take care of most of it, but that didn’t mean Vivian didn’t feel bad. He stroked his hand over the horse’s nose. “I’m sorry this happened to you. This is going to help others…please pass peacefully. You did your work. It was unfair of them to do this to you.” Vivian told the horse gently.

He looked back at Caro. “I haven’t given up, but I have to face facts. There is a chance he will come out of the initiation ritual and butcher me without a word. I know I tried to kill the man who initiated me. He’ll have no use for me afterwards. I don’t have a lot of skills, not like you.” He pointed out. “I meant closed off emotionally. Trust me, in my line of work you can tell. He guards himself so closely and doesn’t have a lot of empathy. I’ve slept with him but I don’t know much about him other than he’s a very talented mage who was hideously abused as a child.”

A Valran? Like the man’s head of household? She was a Valran, and he’d heard the term before. It was like a trusted servant or employee, above a normal servant but not quite to the level of the Veir himself. “Is that what you are? A Valran?” Vivian asked. He winced at the smell as the man cut away the stomach, holding up an arm to shield himself from the juices being spilled. He knew he was a liability. Degare was taking a risk with a street raised brat who had no idea how to play in the Candor. He rubbed the back of his neck, nervously playing with his hair.

“Alright then, teach me how to not be a liability. For the record, I only trusted you because I didn’t think Degare would keep morons or people dangerous to him in his employ.” Vivian muttered. He took the man picking up his bag as a sign the Necromancer was done with the horse. He wanted to help the poor thing pass peacefully, but he wanted to say something to Caro first. Being part of the Entente was important, but for Vivian it was so much more than wanting to gain power. He wanted to change the stars of the people suffering around him. The Entente was a means to an end, not the goal.

“Caro…this is a way out.” He looked up to meet the other man’s eyes. “This is a way out of having to sell my body. Of eating rats and getting the ever living hell beaten out of me for existing. This is an escape and I would be an idiot not to take it. Teach me to play the game. I’m good at putting on another face, I fooled you easily enough.” He smirked wryly. “Maybe I don’t know everything but you could teach me that. Teach me manners and all that crap nobles are always going on about. But I’ll keep my humanity for as long as I can. I want to help people with my power, not drown them.”

[Arkash]

"...He was?" Arkash asked when the boy mentioned that Degare was abused as a child. "By your line of work... Do you mean as an escort?" he asked rather politely, or as politely as one could when asking if one was a whore.

"No," he answered as he cut away the stomach, the foulness of the juices spewing from the inside. It was nothing he hadn't smelled a hundred times before, and it barely met him over the stench of the very ground they stood upon. "I'm merely a contractor that works closely with house Socorro. I'm good at my job, and so the house is one of if not the most frequent of my clients."

When Vivian told the Rath to teach him, Arkash smiled a little. He collected his equipment and moved around to position himself at the horse's head. "There's a valuable lesson therein of itself," Arkash declared when Vivian justified his reason for trusting him. "Everyone has an angle; you can't trust anyone with even the slightest sliver of information, not without some sort of payment in return," Arkash explained as he drew the Mortifier's dirk from his kit.

Gently, he ran his hand along the top of the beast's head and felt the skin above the eyes, gently pressing while he searched for the soft spot of the skull. When he found it, he gently pressed with the mortifier's dirk, pierced the skin, and penetrated the brain. "I know what you're saying, Vivian," Arkash assured as he held the tool steady as the flesh was converted. "I'll help you, but no more than you're willing to help yourself," Arkash said as he removed the tool from the frontal lobe, then stashed it in his bag.

From that same bag, he drew a small capsule, a transistor, and gently pushed it into the hole the Mortifier's dirk had created. The beast would twitch a little, hooves spasming and muscles flexing involuntarily as Arkash pushed his finger into the wound to chase the capsule, and guided the piece to the correct spot.

Curiously, it still drew breath, though it had been cut open for some time. If anything, the beast appeared to be breathing with greater stability than it had before. Arkash appeared to watch the beast as he stepped around its body to kneel at its broken leg.

From his kit, Arkash drew a small golden needle and began to weave it through the air. Following the end of the tool was a blue etheric thread that appeared to glow as it was woven rather easily into a cloth; materialized from seemingly nothing.

Once the Sinew Cloth was complete, Arkash adjusted the stallion's hoof to properly align it, then cut open the inflamed flesh to spill the rancid blood and juices that piled there. With his scalpel, he sawed his way through to the bone and cut away that scrap of flesh. Curiously, the ruptured vessels in the horse's skin didn't bleed; its heart had long since stopped.

Deftly, Arkash stuffed the wound with the Sinew cloth, then used Activators as he poured them from the Mortar in his bag to turn the cloth into layers. Before Vivian's eyes, he would see the bone repaired, followed by the muscle, vessels, skin, then the fur to replace it. In mere seconds, all the damage to the site was gone without so much as a scar to herald that it was once there.

"You're a good kid, Vivian," Arkash said as he brushed himself off. "Naive, but good." With that, the horse began to stand. The beast rolled to its feet, chest still agape with stitches to hold the curtains of flesh open. It was apparent that the thing's heart had stopped beating, but its lungs still filled with air and expanded the cage of its ribs with every draw. it stood there in silence as though it was awaiting command. Arkash watched the beast, apparently delighted by the shine of his eyes. "I hope you keep that innocence about you, though. After all..."

"Just because someone comes from poor circumstances, doesn't make them disposable," he quoted with a gentle pat on the undead's shoulder, then turned to grin at the boy.

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[Vivian]

Vivian nodded sadly. “Yes, but you didn’t hear that from me.” He mentioned with a stern look at Caro. “When you deal with that sort of shit growing up the last thing you need is people whispering about it in hallways. I’m trusting you with that. Don’t make me regret it.” He wasn’t sure what he could actually do in the case that Caro went sniggering to the servants that their master was the victim of abuse, but he could get quite creative if he put his mind to it. In the brothel he’d grown up in, he’d seen whores do everything from putting boot black in other girls’ tooth powder to hiding dead fish in their rooms and putting pepper oil on their underthings. Sometimes he was the one helping spike wine with soap, other times he was the one with black teeth. Ye gods, whores could be a petty bunch.

Caro’s delicate little edging into his personal vocation made him laugh. “Escort?” he giggled. “Honey, escorts are pretty, clean things with expensive wardrobes who share champagne flutes with nobles escaping their wives. I’m a streetwalker. Whore. It’s alright to say it, I know what I am. Escort. That’s a good one.” Though, come to think of it he really was edging his way into a new clientele. He counted a Veir among his clients now instead of a short list titled ‘guards that won’t rob you’. Not that he had any ideas of going to an expensive bar and picking up clients; not only would the Veir disapprove of him bringing men home he was certain that escorts had their own system of territories…and could afford poison instead of boot black.

Whores were whores, whether they drank out of wine glasses or tin mugs.

He moved back slightly to allow Caro near the horse’s head, and smirked at him. “Does this mean I get to charge you for that little tidbit a moment ago?” He teased. Right, he needed to learn to stop trying to make friends here. This was a different world where a man didn’t get friends by sharing meals. He watched as Caro slid a tool into the horse’s temple, and relaxed somewhat. There. The animal was dead. Poor thing deserved a good rest. Vivian didn’t count himself as a religious man, but he hoped the horse’s spirit would look on them favorably. He watched in fascination as the Necromancer pressed something to the corpse.

He drew back with a curse as the horse shuddered, and drew breath. It couldn’t be alive! It was dead, clearly dead, with glassy eyes and half it’s guts hanging out on the ground. It’s tongue was blue. There was no way it was alive. Vivian’s eyes followed the golden thread as it wove a cloth in midair, seemingly right before his eyes. Caro knelt at the corpse’s broken leg, and lanced it open. Vivian winced; there were few things fouler than a broken leg gone septic. Even though there was very little blood, a flood of grayish-green infection poured out. Caro cut away the foulness, and stuffed the wound with the cloth he had made. Amazingly…it healed dead bones and muscles long since set to rest.

Vivian could do little more than stare as the horse rolled up off the ground, very much like Bara did after a good roll on the Veir’s lawn. It stood there, silently, ropes of intestine hanging down and chest pinned open by the sutures Caro had made earlier. Cautiously, Vivian approached it and put his hand on the cold, soft nose. Yes, quite definitely dead. Now animated. He glanced at the Necromancer as the man threw his own words back at him. He wasn’t sure if he was making a joke of them or not.

“He’s not in pain?” Vivian asked curiously. “It can’t feel that, surely?” He reached up and fixed the horse’s matted forelock, brushing strands of its ratty mane free of its ears.

[Arkash]

The necromancer was quiet through Vivian’s expression of trust; that he’d not heard of Degare’s abuse through the younger man. All the same, he nodded after a moment of consideration, eyes spacy in thought.

“…Yes?” He returned when the boy made a mockery of his careful choice of words. Evidently, the subject was enough to get the younger man rambling, which Arkash only half paid attention to while he worked. “Well,” he began as the tirade neared its close. “You’re at least pretty and clean, I thought that might count for something.” He spoke with something of a sly grin. “But if you’d rather be called a whore…” Trailed the doctor with a shrug.

At the question of reimbursement, Arkash merely raised a brow with a knowing smile about his features. No, Vivian didn’t get to charge him. “I already gave you some information,” granted, even the knowledge of the Rathor village had its price in the form of forgiveness and help, but Arkash neglected to mention that.

Without pause, the older of the two moved to perform some surgeries on the equestrian. A capsule was forced into the medulla of its brain and the injury to its leg was completely restored with just some Sinew Cloth and Activators. Once he made the beast rise, he presented his work with an air of pride, a grin that spoke volumes of his might at the moment he was able to make the horse rise once more.

Lifeless skin and bits of entrail hung from the crevice in its stomach, lungs filling purely by reflex as its broken, undead cerebrum continued to fire orders at its accumulation of dying cells.

“No,” Arkash answered. “It’s dead… Entirely. This is what a Necromancer can do to just about any clump of flesh with a brain,” he explained. “And you saw the ease with which I was able to restore its leg, so watch it now.” As he spoke, the horse began to descend the mound of meat and began to walk its way back to the ramp they’d descended from. The previous injury didn’t so much as spasm or catch the movement of its leg; it was as though the limb was never broken at all.

“Even novice Briomancers can begin to undo some of the most disastrous and lasting injuries with the tools available to them, you know,” Arkash explained as he began to collect his things and put them all away. “If you’d like, I can gladly show you the basics.”

Image source.