Installment 34 [https://squirrel.dogphilosophy.net/Installment034.png]
To the horror of the onlookers, the four hearts and the flesh of the beast began to stretch themselves with sickening squelching sounds towards the bones of the woman.
Al looked frantically to the others, desperate for an idea. This was one of those rare problems where Al was forced to agree that magic would be an ideal solution, and he regretted he didn't have any that was useful for this.
"Can we touch it now?" Gruntle asked.
"Don't! Not safe to touch it!" Al shouted, truly wishing for the first time that he actually did know how to shoot magical fire from his fingers. Then, remembering Wikwocket's plea, he pulled the crossbow bolt out from where he'd tucked it into his belt.
"Told you!" Wikwocket shouted as Al threw it towards the unnatural spectacle of the viscous sacrificial flesh beginning to engulf the bones. The vial of ultraphlogisticated oil tied to the bolt struck the stone floor of the cellar just inside the circle, shattering to spray a searing flash of bright fire across everything inside. The chanting halted, and the whispering nearly deafened Al with its enraged ranting. A sudden gust of wind pulled past them from behind as the entire formation of circle, pentagram, candles, flesh, and the skeletal woman vanished, leaving only the dry bones of the beast visible in the light of the slowly dwindling alchemical fire.
"It is probably good that we did not help with that." Bote remarked. They noticed the blood spreading across the floor around Gruntle's feet as it oozed from the shredded flesh of his shoulder and leg. Bote went over to attend to the injuries.
"What just happened?" asked Wikwocket.
"I think we interrupted whatever it was trying to do...right?" Al replied, looking to Gruntle for confirmation.
"It was saying shaman stuff. Then it was angry that the meat was burning. Said it'd have to finish ... at home? Said it would punish us if it found us again. Then more shaman stuff."
"Great." Al said. Then he asked, confused, "One meat?"
Gruntle simply grunted in reply, while Bote made a plea to Indicina to "correct" Gruntle's injuries. A flash of divine light responded, leaving the wounds looking as though they'd been healing for some time. Surprised, Gruntle gave Bote a grunt of acknowledgement as well.
Bote smiled. "I was not certain that would be allowed. Welcome to the ineffable plan, my monstrous friend."
"Is it over? Did we win? We've defeated the Demonic Flesh-beast of Henhaven, right?" Wikwocket asked.
"Demonic Flesh-beast of Henhaven? Really?"
"It needs a dramatic name!"
In the dim light of Al's candle and the last flickers of the alchemical fire, the bones of the beast looked as though they'd been picked clean by ants and left for years in the sun. Gruntle walked past Al, leaving bloody pawprints in his path, and grabbed hold of one the the beast's ribs. He broke the end loose and stuck it between his back teeth to break it open, but it crumbled into dry pieces when he did. He grumbled with disappointment.
"I should have told you not to do that, shouldn't I?" Al asked rhetorically. "Anyway, I think maybe...we did win? It's hard to tell, I still don't understand what's going on here. We should go through the places we haven't looked at yet to at least make sure we won't be leaving anything dangerous behind us and hopefully find some clues about what was really happening. Then we can go back to the village and get some rest, and come back tomorrow for a more thorough look. We can bring the beast's skull with us for proof that it's dead. That's the traditional thing to do, isn't it?"
"That seems fitting, as long as someone holds it up over their head in front of the villagers and announces Behold! The Demonic Flesh-beast of Henhaven is slain!, or something like that." said Wikwocket.
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They carried the skull of the beast up with them and left it on the table in the feast-hall while they continued their investigation. Al convinced the others detour back to the servant's room with him to pick up the candelabra. He replaced the candles he'd taken onto it and lit them, which greatly improved Al's ability to see.
They returned upstairs to the room the beast had come from. It turned out to be a once-fine bedroom. The bed was shredded and feathers from the mattress and pillows were strewn about the room. Some once-valuable torn clothing lay on the floor in front of an open wardrobe, which contained some additional sets of high-quality shirts and trousers, alongside a selection of elegant gowns in many colors. The other strange magical torch, now inert and dark, still lay in the middle of the floor.
Wikwocket, naturally, gravitated towards the wooden chest against the wall, the lock built into it suggesting something worth protecting inside. She giggled as she took out a set of lockpicking tools. While Al, Bote, and Gruntle wandered the room examining (and, for one of them, sniffing) the bed and wardrobe, Wikwocket carefully probed the lock mechanism on the chest. They found little besides more very nice clothing which looked to be for someone just a bit smaller than Al, and an un-emptied old chamberpot under the bed, when Wikwocket's shout startled them all.
"TRAP!"
Everyone froze, but it was a shout of joy rather than a cry of warning. "There's an actual trap in the lock! Things like this are in so many stories but I've never actually seen one before! This is great! A real trapped lock! Oh, there's got to be something good in here!"
Al slowly exhaled and tried to relax. "Please don't startle us like that. It's been a very tense night. Is it a trap that's going to go off and kill us all while you're fiddling with it?"
"Don't know yet! But, look, there's a little needle in there attached to some kind of mechanism inside. Maybe it stabs anyone messing with the lock, maybe it shoots out, maybe it shoots in and punctures a bladder of poison gas or acid or something...it could be all kinds of things! Isn't it exciting?"
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It took some convincing, but Al and Bote were able to talk Wikwocket into waiting to dabble with the lock mechanism by promising they could bring the whole chest back with them when they left. Gruntle didn't seem to have any opinion, as he yawned and seemed to be considering whether to take a rest on the destroyed bed.
"Let's keep moving, we've got a little more to investigate, and we might run into something else that we have to fight." Al said, offering some motivation. He got a grunt of acknowledgment and a calm, contented grin in return.
Well, Al thought to himself, it looks like enough violence actually does settle him down a little. That's good to know.
The door across the hall from the bedroom led into a private study. A very comfortable-looking well-padded chair sat in front of the preserved pelt of an exotic feline beast which had been made into a rug. The taxidermist who'd made it had left the fanged head and claws attached to it. Al recognized it as a tiger, from illustrations in a bestiary in his family's own library. Someone must have paid quite a lot for it, he thought, since tigers lived somewhere far away, and the preservation work was expertly done.
Once he got over the novelty of the rug, he noticed the bookcases, and the writing-desk with the spilled ink on it and an open, overturned codex lying on the floor underneath it. Al beckoned the others into the room.
"Doesn't look like there's anything alive in here, unless there are mice in the seat-cushions or something. Does our expert on subtlety have any opinions on what might be dangerous here?" Al asked.
"Me?" Gruntle asked in return. Al wasn't sure if he meant he was dangerous or if he was asking if he was the "expert on subtlety". Al suppressed a laugh at that thought.
"I was asking our traps expert over there."
"Well, books are expensive, so I wouldn't expect someone to have anything that would explode or catch fire in here, unless they had some reason to want them all destroyed. Someone could have a fake book with something inside it. Or maybe..." Wikwocket answered, drawing her rapier as her voice tapered off. She charged across the room to stab the corner of the writing desk. "Or maybe the furniture isn't furniture at all!" She looked disappointed when nothing happened. "But, apparently the desk really is. It could have been a mimic, though!" She moved over to poke the seat-cushion on the chair, then walked around the room prodding the bookshelves hopefully. She even stabbed the head of the tiger-skin rug, looking disappointed that none of the furniture resisted.
"How about that book lying on the floor there?" Al prompted. Wikwocket walked over and jabbed it as well, to no reaction.
"I meant, is that some sort of trick? A false book with some kind of mechanism in it meant to trick us into picking it up?"
Wikwocket knelt down and spent a while examining it. There was a creak of wood straining as Gruntle slouched onto the chair while she did so. The codex was fitted between a pair of flat wooden boards, bound loosely through the pages with twine. There were no markings on the outside, but there were some small torn pieces of paper scattered on the floor nearby, stained with splashes of ink.
"Just looks like a book to me." Wikwocket finally announced.
Al breathed a sigh of relief. "I guess we're being paranoid, we've been worrying about traps like in the stories all the way through here and you've only found one." He leaned down and picked the book up from the floor.
Then, he screamed as the fangs of the tiger-skin rug bit deeply into his calf. The now-familiar whispering sounds came from the rug as the limbs tried to wrap themselves around him.