The moon shone its maniacal smile down on the two wanderers by the blacklight lantern in the grass. In the umbral glow, one, disheveled man lay in uneasy dreams, his tattered cloth tunic wet with sweat. Next to him, staring up into the skies, sat a dark shape clad in a worn leather coat - his pale skin concealed behind a low-drawn hood.
The grass, wet with condensation, bristled from their perimeter; his tell-tale sign that his companion and protector was seeing to what little safety could be said to exist out in the darkness of the forests of The Cradle. Despite his size, the beast sniffing and scanning his way through the grass was a gentle creature. Logan would not hesitate to point out to his partner that he might’ve done better as a companion dog to the Aristocracy, rather than a scouting hound, but Zeke the red field setter, would disagree. He simply wasn’t meant for a life of soft cushy pillows and luxury.
Logan closed his coat as he heard the moans from his left and threw a sideways glance at the unconscious, pale man writhing on the log. Sighing, he reached into the pocket of his coat and procured a spherical flask with a swirling, yellow liquid that seemed to glow in the dim, blue light of the lantern. With his black-gloved thumb, he popped off the cork and turned the flask upside-down to pour the fluids on his companion’s chest.
The vile, chemical stench of the liquid burned his nose and eyes; truly, it was the type of scent one never really became accustomed to, no matter how many bodies he coated in the damn stuff. He could only imagine how foul it must have reeked for Zeke; his keen nose likely wrinkled as he sneezed somewhere out in the forest. But it served a purpose - most things pertaining to his dark work did.
Logan’s visitor retched drily and quickly rose to a seat, spitting out globules of the stingingly intense chemicals. “F-Fuck!” The man shouted and twisted about, his eyes wide with panic and terror.
The dark shape sat back down on the log and stared into the lantern with a muttered: “Sorry. But I thought you’d like this.” The panic-stricken man looked down at the terrifying figure’s hand - a hand clutching a leaf-wrapped slice of fungusmeal bread.
“It’s not much, but it’s what we’ve got.” Logan’s black coat creaked as the stranger grabbed the slice of bread and quickly brought it to his mouth; seeking sustenance before his mind had even made sense of his current circumstance.
As he bit into the bread to sate the ravenous hunger, it began to dawn on him that something was horribly amiss. The events leading up to the meal flashed before his eyes. Spurts of blood, howls of pain and terror - the crackling of blunt-force dismemberment overcame his senses - after-images of the attack that had seemed to come from nowhere in particular. But opening his eyes again did not bring any relief.
The black shape of his savior was as horror-inducing as the images themselves as it struck him who- or what this man was. Next to him, sat a Ghast; one of the Order’s most terrifying, myth-infused creatures - said to be more than a Man, but with the morality of a beast.
But despite the fright, despite the confusion, he could not stop his eager hands from pressing more of the bread into his mouth. He got the distinct feeling that the shadowy Ghast had seen this before - that he might’ve had a propensity for picking up failed caravaneers from the wayside and feeding them.
Logan attempted to reorganize his hood, only to find that it was difficult to see the Caravaneer through the black leather. He briefly considered pulling the mask off, but thought the better of it - the man had likely seen enough horrors for such a horrible day.
The wayward Caravaneer looked up at the man’s white, solid face of porcelaine, with thin slits for eyes and a mouth of bared fangs. By his voice, he sounded young and as he pulled back the hood, he saw a frizzled head of dirty-blonde hair; a normal man, by the looks of him. But the rumors all spoke of that mask in hushed voices - how seeing one of their kind never meant good tidings for the beholder.
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Before he could speak his unnerve, Logan began: “You were part of the caravan headed to the north-east, but you were attacked. The Hellspawn fell on you… I’m sorry, but your colleagues...”
As soon as the stranger spoke of them, he remembered the monstrosities that had sprang from the trees to tear them apart, obliterating the cool evening atmosphere to turn it into a brief, living hell. The Caravaneer squeezed his eyes shut and pressed the rest of the bread into his mouth, whimpering: “A-all of t-them?”
Logan nodded and drew a deep breath of the still, cold, humid night’s air. “I hope so…”
The whimpering stranger sniffled and concealed his face behind his hands, as if to hide from the retinal scars of monstrum hiding in the shadows beyond the lantern.
“W-what…?” He asked.
Logan sawed his jaws back and forth and kept a weary eye on the hound’s macular reflexes staring back at him from the forest, mulling the question over.
“The Hellspawn… I’m sure you’re aware-...” He shook his head. It would be pointless to go on - to scare this small man more than he already had been. But if anyone deserved to know… He went on to explain:
“They take some back to the hive.” The Ghast’s breath froze in the air, forming a clear, white mist as the late autumn breeze brought a pocket of cold over the forest.
“Why!? W-what… what do they do to them? Y-you’re a Ghast, w-we… you have to save them!” Logan looked down onto the lantern and considered his next words.
There was a tangible darkness to his voice as he answered: “This has been their world for so long that they’ve gotten into the habit of doing whatever the hell they please… I’m sorry. I’ll keep you in mind as I change that.” The ravenously hungry man atop the log had, if possible, paled a brighter shade of white. Ghasts - the long, secretive arm of the Governor, were the heroes of legends. To hear one speak so grimly of their situation made his stomach churn and squirm with a tangible sensation of disgust - one that only grew stronger by the second.
A biting pain shot through the caravaneer’s abdomen - he lurched forwards and grunted.
The Ghast continued staring at the hound’s reflexes in the night, not even turning his head to look at the pained Caravaneer.
Logan rose from his seat and stepped over towards the lantern, turning over his shoulder to say: “I’m sorry.” He spoke with a darkness and with a certain sense of regret staining his until-then calm voice. The pains had become nearly unbearable by that point.
The Ghast continued: “Barely anyone ever gets away from the Spawn…”
“H-Help! Help me - it hurts! It hurts so bad!” The man grunted from his fours, attempting to retch, but nothing would spill from his throat- despite his best attempts.
Logan bent down and raised the lamp to his patron’s face, bringing it close to the Caravaner’s wrinkled, pale cheeks. There, beyond his corneas, he saw countless tendrils of dark flesh squirm inside his eyes - as if he needed the confirmation.
The Ghast rose back up to his height and drew his hood, concealing his face to nearly blend in perfectly with the dark. With his free hand, he reached into his pocket to retrieve his silver tinderbox and produced a matchstick with masterful precision - practiced to the point he could be half-asleep and still perform his duties in the pitch-black night.
“Let thy name be remembered by the ones left behind. They will sleep well knowing your final moments were Pure. What’s your name, Caravaneer?”
Calm would be the wrong word. But the stranger’s incantation served to still some of the horrific thoughts of the Hellspawn burning on his retinas and served to recenter the Caravanner’s chaotic mind enough to answer: “T-Theodore… Theodore Wellwater… P-please tell m-my wife…” Logan could see that the man already knew what was coming, but at least the Incantation had strengthened him enough to weather the pain. He’d learned that faith could have that effect.
With a flick of his hand, Logan set the match alight and in the same movement dropped it - down unto the accelerant-drenched, brown tunic; sparking a blaze of fire tall enough to singe the crowns of the lofty pine trees surrounding the clearing. Before he had even had time to scream, Logan had pocketed the tinderbox and readied his pistol; a long, black, clean construct - the type only a Ghast could wield. With an imperceptible, quick motion of his right index finger, he set the night alight with a localized explosion of death. The sleek metal’s barrel kicked back as he let loose a single bullet to the burning man’s forehead; hopefully before the pain of his burning flesh had registered in full.
Logan didn’t wait - he knew what’d come next. He took a step back in time to dodge the fleshy, black, long tendrils exploding from the man’s stomach and chest, dismembering the now-dead torso and leaving him a puppet of burning flesh; suspended by the long tentacular growths wrapped around the trees. In an instant, the raging fire spread along the dark, writhing tendrils to illuminate the clearing and singe the Hellspawn Hive-Seed in a writhing dance of what Logan hoped to be agony.
“Zeke!” He shouted at the forest and at his command, Ezekiel’s long, red coat glistened a fiery red to rival that of the flames as the large, red field-setter came to his companion’s side - his eyes free of judgment and wise to the necessity of the brutal deed.
Logan pressed his foot into the harness of the red field-setter and with great haste, the two set off back into the obscuring shade of the forest - away from the numerous columns of fire raging to the east.
“Looks like we’re taking another detour.”