Everyone gathered in the gallery. Ike and Nerinai, followed by the two scholars, were the last into the room. Donnahais and his Arcani twins, Deon and his Marcusi entourage, and, of course, the Crows.
Three of the Crows knelt in a circle at the back of the room. The center of attention. As Ike pushed his way past two of Deon’s softly weeping attendants he finally saw what pulled everyone into the room at once. The origin of the scream that pulled them out of the basement and set everyone’s already frayed nerves on an even steeper edge.
Crow Yanell, body held up by two spears ripped off the well and jammed into her spleen.
Blood was still trickling down the shaft of either spear and pooling on the ground. The walls were sprayed with it, her chin was soaked in it, and her uniform had been soaked in it. Ike felt a signature disgust bubbling up in his stomach, then had to hold back the bile in his throat by turning away from her corpse there. So much blood.
Ike chose to look around the room at everyone else instead of Yanell. What was left of Yanell, anyways. He found himself somewhat in the middle of everyone else mostly because everyone else moved to the outskirts of the room. The Marcusi attendants the most. Ike noticed a group of them huddled near the chef, who was torn between angrily murmuring about his soup and expressing complete and utter dismay at the horrible waste of life. The others mostly just nodded, eyes locked on the horror.
“Oh dear, by god! What travesty, what misery….” Deon was pacing around the Crows. He couldn’t decide on keeping his arms crossed over his chest, or waving them in the air. He barely noticed Ike and Nerinai walk in. “Who could have done such a thing!”
“I can think of someone. Perhaps, even, a few someones.” muttered the Martial.
Ike felt a chill running down his spine. Not just from the wet stains there, either. He’d almost completely forgotten about the trick they pulled on him upstairs, how they left the trio drunk and sleepy in a rush to move on. He could only keep his eyes on them for a second before Donnahais' pointed stare made him turn away.
That led him to wonder. What did vengeance from the Arcani look like? He didn’t even know how badly they were taking it. Was it just the shame of being tricked and drugged that way, or was there a deeper anger simmering between the two of them now? Either way, Ike definitely had no good will left to play with them.
Ike needed something to do besides worry and avoid the bleeding corpse.
He turned back around to face the body and the Crows. Despite never getting the chance to know her well, Ike couldn’t help but feel a pang of stabbing guilt for her. Quiet and honorable. In the brief time he knew her, that’s what he saw. That’s how he’d remember her. There were a lot more he’d known in a shorter time who proved worse, less worthy of honoring in his head. Yanell couldn’t have a life or his help now, so memory was his only gift.
“Misery, misery!” cried Deon. His ravings hadn’t stopped yet. Ike watched him pace around the Crow’s backs, swishing in his lush silk clothing.
With a deep sigh, Ike walked over and put his hands on the man’s shoulders. He did the same to Ike, and then Ike had to deal with the metallic bite of death’s odor as well as the older man’s ravings right to his face.
“Oh, dear god, dear god! She was so young my boy, my…” There were no tears on the man’s face, but he was still sobbing hard.
Hadn’t this man seen death? Ike found himself staring at the other man with a barely hidden sneer. He wasn’t mad at him, how could he hate somebody grieving a death? No, it was something selfish and rooted deep inside of him. Muckraker’s pride. Old curses rose up in his mind like bile, anger from having been drowned in enough death and fear for decades. How could a man like Deon, at least twice his age and likely more, act like this?
Ike knew how. He was a normal, empathetic human being who hadn’t been whooped for crying over corpses.
Ike let the so-called Lord embrace him with only mild discomfort. After a few moments of that he pushed himself away and addressed the man directly.
“She’s gone now, alright? You should- should go.”
“She was so young… and you are my boy. You are perhaps even younger, and look at what life will do to you! This place is a curse! Nobody should have ever come!”
“You shouldn’t have come,” Ike said, no little annoyance leaking into his words. Nerinai’s effect, probably. “Why did you?”
“Glory and riches boy… pathetic things. Properly foolish now, yes, this I see. I have taken the Marcusi all around the world in search of better, bigger, grander things. Such a fool I have been…”
“Yeah. Right. Just, ah, could you leave? I don’t think we need more chaos now, sir.”
“Of course my boy, of course…” said Deon as he joined his followers, shaking and holding his head. Ike’s voice was so quiet he hadn’t even known if the man heard him at first. He was fighting to sound polite, when really all he wanted to do was shout and break something.
Idiot. He had to remember that he was an idiot. Standing in the middle of the room, between the group of everyone else and the Crows helped. So much so that he started shaking, whether from the sudden and unwelcome hint’s of grief in his body or from the more sudden stress of standing with so many eyes on him he wouldn’t know.
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Ike joined the Crows around the corpse of Yanell, but still refused to look at her. He had something more important badgering his mind anyways and wanted to slap himself for it. He reached out and laid one clammy hand on the shoulder of the Crow who sounded like their leader before.
Playing the leader was never Ike’s specialty. He hated that he had to now, but nobody was doing anything but weeping and it was bothering him. They still had work to do. Ike still had a dozen bruises and cuts from fighting the skeleton in the basement. None of them had time to deal with Yanell’s death, and acknowledging that made it hurt even worse.
Kassidy looked up at him from the floor. There were still tears streaming down the sides of her face, but she composed herself to speak to the Guardian.
“Yes?”
Ike didn’t know what to do, so he knelt down next to her. Kassidy and the three other Crows had their palms to the ground. Had he come in on anyone else doing this, he might’ve thought they were worshiping Yanell, but this was some sort of respect for the dead ritual too weird for even the Black Monastery. Not that he’d seen proper rites given to many of the dead. Just a big fire, usually.
He blinked away those images and focused on the Crows. Maybe this was how they always did things, but Ike wanted to help them.
“We should get her down.”
Kassidy simply nodded. Ike held out his hand to help her up, and soon enough the others were rising as well. Syphe, the skittish one, was the only Crow who didn’t stick around when they started pulling out the spears.
Rose held the body up while Ike and Kassidy pulled out the spears. It was nasty work. Ike had to keep his eyes low for fear of seeing her eyes and suddenly making all of this so much worse. He knew if he could just focus on the dead parts of her body that he could get through it. More blood spilled on Ike’s boots without the spears to plug the holes. They left the weapons on the ground and gently laid the body down on the ground until Syphe came with one of the old tapestries from the wall. Ike thought it was a shame to have two beautiful things spoiled in blood.
They worked in silence. Ike was folding the tapestry around her body as carefully as he could, working his fingers around the thick wool when he felt another hand touch his. He looked up to see Rosa’s face, solemn.
“We can take the body from here Guardian. The Crows appreciate everything you have and will do for us. Tend to your mission, we should be the one to care for our own.”
Ike nodded. He stepped back as the three women lifted up the tapestry awkwardly between each other and started out of the room. Before they could go, a thought smacked into Ike’s leg.
“Oh. Wait!” He hurried over to them, basically jogging to work off the embarrassment from almost shouting. He couldn’t keep any part of his body working smoothly.
He took the shovel off his back and held it out to Rosa. She looked between him and the tool, confused. “For the burial,” he explained, and pushed it forward. With one hand still wrapped under her body she took the shovel and slung it over her shoulder, then nodded her thanks and the trio moved on. Ike let out a deep breath watching them go. Watching his shovel leave him.
Suddenly he felt naked. Even more than he already did. A nasty feeling was bubbling in his stomach, that cyclical pit of doing wrong and having only two bad options to push forward. Thinking made him feel worse. Not thinking made him feel worse. The Arcani’s stares on his back made his skin prickle.
He was still staring at the doorway long after they left. A bit of movement to his left stirred him out of his unconscious stare. The Marcusi started cleaning up the blood. They wrapped the spears up in cloth and hurried them away. Didn’t clean them, just took them out of the room.
Then he finally remembered the Raveness.
For a moment he panicked. He couldn’t remember seeing her after they came in together. What if she left? A quick look around the room tamed that fear. She had pressed herself up against the wall behind where the others were standing, in the shadow of an old suit of armor. Ike huddled next to her, watching the Marcusi work and praying the Arcani didn’t come at them.
Nerinai looked as miserable as Ike felt. Her face was pale, mouth parted and bottom lip slightly trembling. She stared straight ahead at where the corpse had been before. Even her posture was slouched, and he could tell she was hugging herself under the cloak.
“Nerinai… we should go.” He swallowed. Saying anything to her now felt hard. “We did all we could for her.”
“I did nothing. You, at least, offered your shovel.”
“Really shouldn’t think about it like that. I mean, they knew why they came here. Doesn’t make it right but…” But what? He couldn’t answer.
The both of them whispered breathlessly. After Deon was done, the gallery fell into an even deeper quiet than it had before. Even that ethereal music that permeated the halls seemed to have dimmed out to nothing here.
“The point of the matter is this Guardian: I have failed one of my followers. When a Crow dies, it is my responsibility no matter where or when. I am their Raveness.”
He stared down at her, wondering how he could ever break through that shell of silent heroics. “All we can do now is make it better. Maybe her death was for nothing, but we can stop it from happening again. Still things to do.”
“Yes. Things to do.”
Ike didn’t like the way she said that.
“We’re going to close the gate now, right? All the seals are broken. That’s next. All that’s left. Break the seals, close the gate, very simple, isn’t it? Isn’t that the plan?”
She finally broke her focus on the spot and blinked a few times before looking up into Ike’s eyes. Maybe it was a trick of the light, or he was imagining things, but Ike could swear that those thin lines of violet in her solid black irises were brighter than before. Burning with a passion.
“The Followers of the Carrion Cross have been wronged, and it is only right to do pain unto those who would see us harmed, frightened, or corralled. A murder of one of my Crows will not go unpunished, Guardian. No matter the cost.”
Suddenly Ike felt all the exhaustion from the last few days weighing on his back. The hunger twisting his stomach. When was the last time he ate something? What about Nerinai? If they kept going any longer running on nothing then a personal drive to finish their mission they’d end up dead of starvation or falling asleep into a demon’s maw. He’d seen it happen before.
“Nerinai-” Before he could protest, she grabbed his arm and dug into it with her nails. Ike grimaced a little in response, but the expression on her face caught his attention. There was a fury there that hadn’t been before. Anger cut into the sharp line of her jaw, the slant of her eyebrows, burning in her eyes.
“No. Matter. The. Cost.”
That’s all she said before she let go of him and left. Ike sucked in a deep breath through his nose, trying to still his nerves. He should’ve just turned around then. Too much was starting to go wrong, and they were on the brink.
He cursed under his breath and stormed out after her. Despite everything, having her and having a bit of revenge dispelled that boiling despair in his gut and he’d do nearly anything to have it gone.