Gadorprims just came back, and Lady Scarlet wanted me to clean the garden out for her to redecorate it. It was all dead for good, the zombie plants made out of veins, arteries and tongues, the ones that gulped blood and vomit, were now only inanimate meat and grease encased in bone pots. The mop is made out of three femurs joined by leather, sinew, and some sort of insert that keeps them from moving too much, with a couple of dried out scalps with long hair —one from a redhead, the other belonging to a brunette— wrapped around the lower end. The bucket is, oddly enough, a mundane metal bucket, one that I bet Gadorprims stole from somewhere as a gift for Scarreladai or as a collectible, a mere curiosity that struck his fancy.
The room smelled like iron and rancid flesh, and cleaning with the cave’s murky water did not help much to alleviate this.
She silently watched me from the entrance of the tunnel. Her breathing, a characteristic whistle that can be heard only in moments of total silence, betrays the fact that inside the necrotic exterior there is a living dragon with running, thick red blood. Scarreladai’s heart still beats, and that trivia fact is somehow both infuriating and reassuring, because eit means it can be stopped.
“Carry out the pots and let us get started at once, Pawn,” she asked calmly, kindly. It wasn’t a command, but a petition.
“Yes, Pawn, leaden sorry excuse for a turtle, let her finish this damned thing so I can get my eggs!” Bellowed Gadorprims, from wherever he was then.
“And so damned it will be dear, so, so very damned!” she said, giggling.
“Damned, my lady?” I asked, trying to sound innocent.
She cursed under her breath.
“Hallowed, pawn, I said hallowed. You misheard, you little thing,” Then she smiled with all her teeth and eyes, which was a sight I couldn’t stand for more than a few seconds before going back to my pointless task.
When she got bored of overseeing me and went elsewhere, I threw the mop to a side and thrusted Jillsenbane from above into each pot to burn the human remains in them, holding the sword in place until its scorching ire reduced the entirety of their content to vapor, smoke and ashes. Just because I could not give the owners of those body parts a proper burial, it doesn’t mean they don’t deserve a cremation. She had no use for the tissues anymore, so the excuse that it was just to render the pot lighter to carry would be believable and, hopefully, not result into any more reprimands.
After disposing of the first bone pot by throwing it, ashes and all, into the flooded tunnel, I turned, and my heart almost chokes me when it jumped to my throat. I was centimeters away from an open, rotten-meat-smelling maw, with saliva dripping from each tooth and gum, with the throat pulsating, with the teeth like pikes waiting to impale my flesh.
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I tripped when I stepped back, falling on my back and rolling down the tunnel, falling into the cold water.
Gadorprims laughed out loud.
“You have no idea how long I waited to do that!” he expressed between guffaws.
“With a-all due re-respect: fuck y-you, Si-ir,” I stammered, shivering, crawling out of the deathly liquid to draw a heating sigil on the floor. My whole body ached, I was frozen. My soul wanted to escape my mortal vessel between each breath.
“You are dismissed for today, I got rid of the remaining pots personally. Go to your room and sleep, and don’t bother us. Scarreladai has a room to decorate, and afterwards, we have more… worldly matters to settle. “
“Fuck you, Gadorprims,” I repeated, scowling, resisting the urge to take Jillsenbane out of the scabbard.
“Come on, grab your sword.” He raised a paw and gestured a cross over his heart. “I am open, embrace me like a man embraces a dragon. Come on, butler! Strike!”
I relaxed my expression, putting up a façade of confusion, “Why would I kill a gharial?”
“I feel inclined to wager you absolutely vanquish the subject at social gatherings. Brief fun you are, Pawn. Go to your room if you survive the hypothermia, I am not carrying you,” he said, and then began walking away, leaving me in the floor, cursing him with words I don’t even remember.
I barely managed to scramble to my room, where I collapsed moments after finishing a new warming sigil. After waking up from that forced nap, with the body aching, the head spinning and the sigil extinguished, I grabbed the diary, that I had luckily left safely stashed away, and hastily wrote this entry. Now, to draw a couple new sigils (one for healing, one for warmth) and back to sleep, lest the migraine kills me.
The migraine is gone and the relief is unworldly. My muscles still protest, but I survived the nap. The madman has not come back, has not written, I suspect he is here no more. I miss him. To miss oneself… what a wild concept. I don’t know if I miss him, or the fact it was like leaving someone else in charge of the rudder when the ship was instants away from crashing into the sharp rocks. Now it’s my fault if the whole thing sinks, and that sucks.
I have run some tests, and the dragons don’t mind me singing songs from Los Nocheros at the top of my lungs. Granted, they probably interpret a slightly different and more literal thing than I, when I speak about going to eat her heart. Or they would, if Gadorprims and Scarreladai knew Spanish. I find it funny to ruminate about what they may be thinking. Do they take it for some ritualistic chanting? For calls for help? No, they would have come to shut me up already. I am sure I spoke English in their presence several times, so they must think it’s more of the same.
They are likely to not mind me singing at all, like a man doesn’t mind cats purring or crickets chirping. That’s a positive, if there is one to be found in this whole situation.
I will get out of the room, see what the redecoration was, what new flesh-warped horror is there to scar my mind. I don’t really want to, but it could be something of use, even if macabre.