Before Jerome could go and get information from other gnolls by being drunk, he decided to show some discipline and concentrate on the other quests. Buying items should come first, since that could happen quicker and it was less likely he’d be found out during the process. Then he could sit back and enjoy the sweet sweet embrace of drink.

More crystals would mean more and better items, so it was obvious what Jerome needed to do. The three dead gnoll bodies stared lifelessly at him. There were crystals in there, one in each body, and those crystals would add nicely to the ones he already had.

It had always been Krystyna who’d done this part. He’d watched enough. Well, he’d been in the vicinity enough — he’d avoided watching, because rooting around in a dead body was gross. But this was what he had to do. He had claws to open up the body, he had the knowledge that there was a crystal in there, so there was really nothing stopping him.

Kneeling down got him closer to the body. He was closer to his goal. Yes, this was progress.

He put his bag to the side so it wouldn’t get bloody. That could have taken five seconds, but Jerome looked around for the absolute perfect spot for it, finally settling on a tuft of grass nearby that hadn’t gotten blood on it and that would effectively separate the bag from the dirt.

A sharp claw. He had a sharp claw, and that would work for dissection. Thank goodness this form hadn’t filed down its claws for frickin’ calligraphy.

When the claw touched the stomach it didn’t go through immediately. He had to press down on the skin (the hide?) in order to pierce it. Finally his claw punctured the thing’s hide and Jerome was rewarded by seeing green blood rush to fill the hole. He pulled to extend the cut, creating a line of seeping blood.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Flashbacks of scalpel in hand, like it was yesterday. The Afghan girl about to be opened up before him. He found his claw shaking and digging in.

This gnoll was not the dead girl.

This gnoll was not the dead girl.

This had a purpose. He was to remove its crystal.

Do it. He remembered Rikan’s voice clear, sharp, cutting swiftly through him. Find her soul.

He accidentally crushed part of the gnoll’s entrails while thinking of Rikan and the Afghan girl, which made him even more disgusted. But that didn’t change what he had to do. He had to find the crystal in this corpse.

How to best rummage around a corpse? The crystal had always been in the torso. Jerome thought he’d seen Krystyna reaching up, so maybe it was somewhere closer to the chest than the stomach.

Intestines squished out of the way as he moved his hand up the torso, trying to feel around for where the crystal was located. He was under the rib cage, feeling around in a strange and alien landscape of touch. He touched lungs — he thought it was lungs. Was it the heart? Would he know the crystal when he found it?

It wasn’t on this side, at least as far as he could tell. The spine and the sternum blocked direct passage to the other side, so he pulled his hand out and prepared to stick it back in again.

His arm was sopping wet with green blood and brown, white, red viscera that stuck to him in clumps.

When he tried to throw up there was nothing there. Only a small hint of bile and stomach acid made its way up, burning his throat but giving him no relief.

Screw the crystals.

He had to get something to drink.

Not water. Water would only cure his physical issues of a burning throat.

Alcohol. Just one. One drink, not even talking to anyone, just one drink, and he could start on the other quests.

He stumbled towards the city's entrance.