Empirical Gnollage: Installment 114 [https://squirrel.dogphilosophy.net/Installment114.png]
A terrible predator stalked the woods. In its jaws, its prey's body dangled limply. It quietly slunk out of the trees towards its next quarry.
Al heaved a long-suffering sigh.
"Very funny," he said, not sounding amused at all.
Wikwocket's limp body laughed and looked up at the head of the gnoll that was carrying her by her collar in its teeth. "See?" she said, "I told you it'd be funny!"
"I was being sarcastic," Al explained.
"I know, and that was funny, too!"
"You didn't kill someone while you were gone, did you?"
"Not unless his heart gave up from fright, that's the second time tonight that the poor guy got startled by a gnoll! I'm pretty sure he's fine since he was still screaming pretty vigorously when we left. So, does that dead guy have a full-body tattoo with a terrible curse that corrupts his soul and gave him an insane and uncontrollable craving for buttered eggs?"
"...No. Where do you come up with this stuff?"
Wikwocket tapped the side of her head. "It's all up here! So, what kind of tattoo does he have?"
"He doesn't have any tattoos."
"Really? Did you check everywhere?"
"Yes," Al insisted with a hint of disgust. "Not much to find other than damaged clothing which, by the way, smells awful, plenty of bloodstains, and a lot more scarring than I would have expected. How about you, did you manage to find out anything useful while you were off causing trouble, like where we've been dragged off to and how long it's going to take for us to get back to where we were trying to go?"
"We did! It sounds like we kept anyone from dying here...well, anyone else," answered Wikwocket, nodding to the nearly-naked dead person on the ground, "The people who run the inn here were cleaning up and getting ready for morning and we overheard them talking. You remember that place the guard recommended when we left? We're here!"
"That's... unexpectedly convenient," Al said, "That's worrying enough, but I'd be even more worried if it seemed like he was expecting us in particular to show up. He looked shocked to see us."
"One might suspect that our presence at the time and place to be subjected to the effects of the conjuration," Bote suggested, "is simply a part of the divine plans."
"Sure, but don't you believe everything is part of the divine plans?" Al countered.
"No, not everything. There is some room for the choices of free souls, perhaps so that the world not be so predictable as to be boring to the gods."
"You hear that Al?" Wikwocket added, still dangling by her shirt from Gruntle's jaws, "I'm practically holy entertainment!"
"I feel like maybe we're losing focus on the more immediate problem," Al complained, "This guy seems to have done some sort of demonic summoning spell, and we appeared. He tried to get us brutally killed so we brutally killed him instead, and now we have a dead naked demonic-summoning-guy with nasty new injuries and old scars all over him and a big bite taken out of his neck while at least one of us very obviously seems like the sort of bestial monstrosity that did the biting! Now the people here probably think we're a marauding clan of gnolls stalking them after they just got done getting attacked by goblins, and if someone comes out here investigating there are going to be awkward and possibly incriminating questions for us! So, what are we going to do with this body?"
"E... ," Gruntle began to say, opening his jaws to speak and dropping Wikwocket to the ground. He was cut off on the very first syllable.
"We are not going to eat the rest of him!" insisted Al. Gruntle huffed, but desisted.
"All right, I'm just having fun with you. Don't worry Al, we'll help you figure something out!" Wikwocket promised. She reached behind her neck to feel her shirt-collar. "Oh, by the way, somehow my shirt seems to have gotten a hole in it, could you fix that? Please?"
Al took a deep breath, held it for a few moments, then slowly exhaled.
"Fine, let's hear your ideas," he said. He stepped forward and reached down to magic the cloth in Wikwocket's shirt-collar back together. Wikwocket looked down at the mysterious dead man.
"No tattoos, but a lot of scarring on his hands and arms, and some on his legs and body. He's got those silver rings on his fingers but they're not marked either, just scratched up a bit because he doesn't polish them. He had that coin purse with one hundred and eighty-seven gold coins, two hundred and fifty-three silver coins, and eight copper coins, three more silver rings, and that piece of paper with the magic drawing on it," Wikwocket remembered aloud, "Oh, and those two daggers, which didn't look like a matched set, and his clothes. Did you find anything else?"
"Nothing," Al answered, tugging the shirt-collar lightly to check that it was properly repaired. "He did seem a lot sturdier than I would have expected from looking at him. I don't think he had much chance against all of us, especially when Gruntle surprised him by turning on him, but he put up a lot more of a fight than he should have been able to. Actually, now that we're talking about it, his daggers are a little odd, too."
Al went to the pile of the man's clothing on the ground next to the corpse and picked up the two daggers from where they rested atop it. He handed them to Wikwocket.
"Do these look odd to you?" he asked. Wikwocket gave them a close look, turning them over in her hands.
"The metal looks funny. It's rough and not quite the color I'd expect. Hey, is that silver?"
"I think so," Al affirmed, "I'm not sure but it looks like silver that's been plated on the surface of the daggers by an alchemical process. It'd be a thin layer that would wear away pretty quickly. Maybe he was carrying all of that silver intending to take it to an alchemist to renew the silver plating at some point?"
"Silver's a werewolf thing, isn't it? Do you think he was some kind of werewolf hunter? Oh! Maybe he's working for a vampire, hunting down a rival werewolf in revenge for trying to seduce his zombie lover!"
"That seems unlikely and kind of disgusting. Besides, if this was some sort of werewolf hunter, he doesn't seem like he'd survive long, and why and how would someone who hunts werewolves be conjuring gnolls?"
"Maybe they're natural competitors! You know, fighting over who gets to eat the tastiest people! Do you know anything about werewolves, Gruntle?"
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The gnoll considered for a long moment.
"They don't know what they are," he finally said.
"That... could be true," Al admitted, unsure if the observation was unexpectedly profound or just misinterpretation. "Still, this guy doesn't look like someone who could fight a werewolf and not be torn apart, even more so than he already is with all of the scarring."
Bote joined in with their own observations.
"In my experience as a healer, I believe the scarring we see happened repeatedly over a period of time, rather than being the result of a single event. Some of the scars look at least a year or two old. The large amount of them on the arms and hands might imply defensive injuries, unless he had a habit of inserting his arms into the cage of a wild beast. I am no tailor, but to me the damage to the man's clothing seems recent and I would guess they were largely intact until he found himself fighting goblins tonight, and then gnolls, of course."
"That might be the only clothing he had, too," Wikwocket added, "While we were scouting things out, I got into the room that I think he was renting. We heard the innkeepers talking and it sounded like he probably checked in under a fake name. Maybe the goblins got in and stole everything, but he didn't seem to have anything there - no spare clothes, no luggage, no rune-covered box containing the bones of an ancient murderer. Just the furniture, all ransacked."
"It smells like the only clothing he had, too," Al complained. "Kind of strange for someone carrying that much money. His shoes looked fairly new, too, and well-made."
"You didn't find anything else hidden in his clothes that I missed? There'd need to be something else if he magicked us here,right? He'd need to have a big book of weird magic stuff if he was some kind of wizard, wouldn't he?"
"If he was a student of wizardry I'd expect it, yes."
"Are you sure you searched everywhere? I've heard that sometimes criminals who are worried about being captured will hide things by stuffing them up..."
"I am not going to search that hard," Al said firmly, "but if you want to I won't stop you. I doubt he's hiding wizardry research notes inside his body, though. If he's an actual wizard, the amount of study and practice he'd need to be able to forcibly conjure people over long distances is very substantial and his research notes would be... well, they wouldn't fit. I suppose he might have had to run away from somewhere in too much of a hurry to collect a book of spells before leaving, but if that was the case why would he be carrying so much money? If he had time to grab a bunch of money you'd think a wizard would have their most important research ready to grab just as quickly. I know I would. All he had was that diagram, and that looked like something sketched in a hurry rather than a proper arcane formation."
"How did he magic us here, then?"
"Well, if he actually was a wizard it's possible the summoning spell is something he'd rehearsed before he had to leave. Once you go through the meditations to get your mind to hold onto the concepts for a particular work of magic, it tends to persist for a while as long as you don't try to rehearse something too different. I suppose it's also possible that he's one of those people with some sort of innate talent for magic but this seems like a weirdly specific thing to have a natural sorcerous talent for."
Al fidgeted uncomfortably as he continued.
"There's also a possibility that he was given this magic by someone or something."
"Oh! Now we're getting somewhere! Demon-cultists getting killed by what they summoned is classic!"
"If that's what's happening here, and now we're involved with it because of this summoning-magic, I'm not at all comfortable with the idea that we may have the direct attention of a demon. Especially one powerful enough to have magic to give away and who might very well be directly responsible for gnolls and might be especially interested in us because of it."
"Aw, we might get to meet Gruntle's grandma! All grandparents care about their grandchildren, maybe we'll get milk and cookies for taking such good care of him! Or blood and souls or whatever demon-grandparents give their grandchildren."
Gruntle looked worriedly around at the sound of the strangled growl-whine of frustration that Al made.
"Please don't even joke about that," Al pleaded, "we've got enough urgently stressful things to deal with already. Demons don't really do nice things. I don't think a demon of bestial violence is going to pat us on the head and thank us, no matter how well we treat our gnoll."
Al thought about this for a moment.
"Right?" he finally asked Gruntle.
"Don't know. Never met her," the gnoll answered.
"Right, well, I think we're getting away from the most immediate problem again," Al said, gesturing emphatically with both hands towards the dead possible-demon-cultist. "I think we should get moving before anyone finds us, so what are we going to do with the dead body?"
He glared at Gruntle to dissuade any possible suggestions of cannibalism.
"How quickly could you learn how to turn him into a zombie so we could take him with us as our pet dead-guy?" Wikwocket asked.
"I am not going to do that even if I could. Necromancy has got to be at least as dangerous as demon-magic anyway. We could just leave him here but then anyone who comes looking will find him easily. We could spend some time trying to dig a grave for him but that would probably take us too long, especially if the ground is still half-frozen."
"You could burn him to ashes with magic fire!" Wikwocket suggested.
"You mean make it obvious that we're trying to destroy evidence by leaving charred bones with bite marks on them?"
Wikwocket laughed. "I think you worry more than you need to, Al!"
"Perhaps Wikwocket's suggestion would be best," Bote offered, to Al's horror.
"There is no way I could figure out how to do corpse-animation magic immediately even if I was willing to, and I'm very surprised to hear that suggested by a holy person."
"No, no, not that part, I refer simply to the part of her suggestion that we take him with us. If you are concerned about arousing suspicions, perhaps it would be best to deliver him with a truthful explanation to the authorities. Or, at least, as much of the truth as you can be comfortable giving. Our slaying of him was legitimately in our own defense against a violent and suspicious person. Given our speculations about his nature and origins, it is not impossible that he is being sought for by agents of the law."
"That means there might be a reward!" Wikwocket added with gleeful avarice.
"Oh, hello there, Southwall city guards! We'd like to bring a murderous demonic beast into the city if you don't mind. Also, we made this rotting dead guy, will you give us any money for him?" Al said sarcastically. He hadn't expected Wikwocket to find that so funny, and he looked worriedly back through the woods in the direction of the inn half-expecting to hear the sounds of torch-and-pitchfork-carrying locals coming to investigate the laughter. After a few moments, the mirth became contagious and he relented, chuckling along with her.
"I guess that was a little funny," he admitted.
"Don't sell yourself short, you're getting better at this!" Wikwocket laughed.
"Not on purpose, and I kind of hate that so far this seems to be the most practical idea. I still don't like the idea of carrying a rotting dead guy with us all day though," Al said. Then he sighed, and rubbed his forehead. "I guess we should go ahead and load him on the cart, it sounds like we're not going to come up with a better idea here. I suppose we can always find somewhere else to get rid of him on the way if we change our minds."
"If you agree, then, I shall invoke the Authority of divinity and perform the appropriate rites upon the deceased. We should then be spared the rotting, at least, and perhaps our attention to the treatment of the dead will reflect well upon us when we present him to the guards."
"Hmmm, I hadn't thought of that," Al admitted. "That's a good thought, go ahead."
While Bote arranged the dead man into a more traditional pose for a prepared corpse, putting its clothes back on and rolling it onto its back with its legs straight and arms crossed over the chest. Al considered whether he should have tried to magic the man's blood-soaked and body-odor-reeking clothing clean first. He reluctantly decided against it in the interest of not looking like he was trying to destroy evidence. Bote's ritual prayer over the body seemed to be a formal and verbose request for the corpse to have a continuing part to play in the ineffable divine plans. Al and Wikwocket worked to make space on the cart as the prayer continued.
"Divinity agrees that he still has use," Bote announced as the the prayer ended. The corpse of the crazed, violent, and possibly demon-worshipping man looked incongruously serene and peaceful after the ritual preparation. It was pale, cold, and already stiff, which made it a bit easier for Al to get it arranged on the cart with Gruntle's help. No further blood dripped from the corpse's injuries, either. Even the clothing didn't seem to stink quite so badly.
"And... he's not going to rot, then?" Al asked.
"Divinity willing, it will be many days before that becomes a concern again," Bote assured him.
Al unpacked his bedroll and covered the corpse with it.
"We can at least avoid displaying a dead man as we travel," he explained. He looked up, and located the faint hint of the approaching dawn through the trees. "North is that way, and I think the road should be over there. Let's get out of here before there's enough light for people to notice us and ask questions or make accusations."