Autumn was different in N'Jarosyl. There weren't many trees around to change color, there wasn't as much fresh air to smell crisp mornings. No, N'Jarosyl was a port city, which made its autumn a harsh bridge between summer and winter. One day, the sun is bright and the days warm. The next, a cold wind blows in on the water. A chill runs up the city's spine. Superstitious sailors claimed it was some kind of geas, some curse brought about by tortured sea spirits -- but Archivist Dima didn't believe in ghost stories.
Archivists might have been the lowest ranks within the Century Chapter, serving as aide de camps to a Magus or Arch Caster, but they were sharp enough to distinguish between folklore and empirical evidence. It was this inductive reasoning that allowed Dima to tremble with fear on the floor as he did -- the living ghost story lounging above him was, in fact, backed by empirical evidence.
The tears on his cheeks had dried since his fingers were broken. His screams muffled into the gag in his mouth. He'd finally mustered the nerve to roll onto his side to look about the room. The two-story hostel wasn't much when he and his coeds laid eyes on it that morning, but it was near the shore and had cheap wine in great supply. To a class of first year Archivists fresh off the semester, that's about as enticing as it needed to be. But now, as the bitter night air wandered through the open windows and dried blood and cold corpses kept him company on the floor, Dima missed the hospitality of the slack-jawed bartender, now slumped over on the stairs with an open throat.
"There's nothing like autumn in N'Jarosyl," the ghost story mused by the window, overlooking the rest of the port district. His voice was scrambled, artificially distorted somehow. "The winds change. Summer gasping for its last breath."
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
He pushed off the window frame, his footsteps clinking on the softened wood floors as thin metal talons protruded from the plated tips of his boots. The evening wind flapped the long, dark red hood and tunic like a cloud of crimson smoke. He took careful, precise steps over each corpse — a handful of them the hostel staff, most of them Dima’s fellow Archivists, still in their gold student uniforms. Dima looked at his dead classmates, quivering at the sight of the bloody bibs on their chests, cascading from under their open mouths, frozen in silent screams.
"Crops like you that bask in the light, growing and sowing each year," he went on, locked onto Dima. Beneath the figure's hood lay a smooth, featureless silver mask, save for a pair of metal flanges at the chin, almost resembling fangs or tusks. "...Ignorant of what you have coming for you. The price of your reckless seeding, I suppose," he knelt down to Dima's level.
The Archivist tried to scramble away, but his bound wrists and broken fingers shot pain up his arms. The figure's gloved hand grabbed Dima's chin and forced him to look into the cold, barren metal face. His fingers slipped over the gag and pried into Dima's mouth. Dima gurgled in protest, even trying to bite the fingers, but the killer's constitution proved too strong, and he secured his grip on Dima's tongue.
"You are all pretty, little flowers," he hissed, his other hand clenching into a fist just beneath Dima's chin, "And I am your winter."
A metallic click, a sharp pain under his chin and a warm river down his throat were the final sensations Dima felt as he gurgled, and eventually relaxed.
The wrist-mounted spring blade tore through the student mage's chin and plunged into the base of his tongue. With a few quick jostles, the tongue came loose, hanging slack in the killer’s hand.
Rising back up, the Tongue Cutter slipped the severed tongue onto a cord, with six others. He returned to his perch at the window, watching a fog cloud roll in on the water with a sigh of relaxation.