Slowly, the pieces were starting to come together.
Nelle hadn’t been actively looking for answers, had no intention of getting involved in Luric’s personal affairs, but it would be a lie to say that she hadn’t been wondering. Wondering why Luric had wanted to stay at an inn too, instead of his parent’s house or with some other relative. Answer: he didn’t have any. She had wondered what had happened that made Luric so spiteful towards his people. Answer: he had been mistreated by them.
She should’ve guessed that last bit on her own, though. Of course these people wouldn’t react kindly to the presence of a blighted person, even if that blighted person was also a child. Nelle knew that in these remote, rural areas, fear of Shulffa, together with everything that she represented, ran deep and rampant, and anything that was touched by her corruption had to be extirpated from society. Executions were not that unheard of, even in this day and age.
She had grown up in a pious environment too, but the guardians at her boarding school were far more concerned with coaching proper decorum than matters of faith. In the capital, as well as other large cities, beliefs and superstitions were met with mockery. Which is also why The Institute of Occultic Science and Affairs didn’t exist for the larger public, as practically no one still believed in demons and monsters and curses. And the people involved with the Institute wanted to keep it that way. If it hadn’t been for Duchess Archvel being directly related to the King, and proving to the nation's higher-ups that there was a surge of demonic activity in recent years that necessitated a special organization dedicated to studying and combating it, Nelle doubted the Institute would’ve ever been created. But demons and monsters and curses were very much a reality to the citizens of Runrick, and like with everything else that pertained to a ritualistic life style steeped in religion, they had a certain way of dealing with these things. She had only heard about what had happened to his friend and the other orphans. She could only imagine what they had done to Luric.
He was walking in front of her again, and she couldn’t help but notice the stiffness in his shoulders. He wasn’t marching ahead at full speed anymore, yet there was something ominous about his tempered stride. With her newly bandaged feet, it no longer hurt to keep up with him, but this time it was Nelle who wanted to keep some distance. It was also what made her still her tongue when Luric had announced they would take yet another detour. There had been something in his voice that told her not to argue with him.
It wasn’t just his stern carriage, she had to admit to herself. Nelle also felt a bit sorry for him, now that a bit of his sad past had been revealed to her. Seeing him stand in front of that grave had moved her, so she thought she could tolerate one more diversion.
Then Nelle saw Luric lightly tilt his head upward. The gesture looked off to her. It was familiar in a way, yet uncanny at the same time. As if this wasn’t something she had ever seen a person do before. The image of an animal came to mind- a cat , more precisely. How they would sometimes raise their nose to sniff at nothing. To taste the air for prey, as they would say.
A shiver ran down her spine. She understood now what about him was setting her so on edge. His demeanour right now reminded her of a predator on the prowl.
She immediately regretted agreeing to this detour.
“Can’t whatever this is wait? It’s already late, and we have done practically nothing for our mission today.”
He didn’t even deign to properly acknowledge she had spoken to him, only rotated his head slightly so he could look at her out of the corner of his right eye. A sign that he had heard her, but didn’t care enough to reply. He just turned his head back and kept walking. Message received and discarded. He didn't even bother trying to appease her with excuses anymore - that’s how committed he was to seeing this mysterious endeavour through.
“At least tell me where we are going.” So she could at least prepare herself for something.
No answer still. She had become completely insignificant to him.
The only reassurance she had now was the cold weight inside the pocket of her trousers. Please don’t make me use it, Nelle thought anxiously.
A few minutes later she became aware of a heavy rancid stench that was gradually growing in intensity. Even with senses that were largely unacquainted to the smells of village life she could tell this was more than just a mixture of livestock and excrement. It was putrid and vile.
They had reached an even shoddier part of town, with houses built out of cob, stone, and sticks, covered with straw roofs. There was no sign of human activity, but lone, ill-fed farm animals were roaming all over.
They stopped in front of a cluttered, mud-filled yard. Several pigs were dawdling around on the other side of the crooked wooden board fence. These pigs weren’t malnourished like the other animals, but when Nelle got a better look at them she noted, horrified, that they had suffered a fate far worse. Almost every one of them had some form of disfigurement. The type that came from violent maltreatment. She saw wounds that had scarred over long ago as well as fresh ones that were still bloody and oozing. There was one walking around with a huge gouge on its back, like something had taken a large chunk out of its flesh; one was dragging along a crushed hind leg; one had its snout cut off; another its eyes poked out; all over were bones and rotting remnants of pig carcasses- Nelle was going to be sick.
What was this place? Why were they here? She looked over at Luric.“Is-Is this the work of the monster?”
This time he answered, but without taking his eyes off the grotesque ensemble. “Yes, but not the one you are thinking of.”
As if on cue, a door swung open, and out of the dingy shack wobbled out a thin, sickly looking man holding a bucket of slop. Just as he was about to toss it to the animals, Luric yelled out to him. “Baliger! Nice to see you, old man. How have you been? Lost a bit of weight, I see.”
The man squinted in their direction, not happy he had company, but then his eyes widened when he saw who his visitor was. “You!”
Luric smirked jovially. “Me!” And his eyes had a dark ferocity that belied his mock jolliness.
If his intentions hadn’t been clear before, they were now. This wasn’t a warm reunion, like earlier at the pharmacy. He was here to settle a score.
He leaped over the fence and landed heavily in the muck. He didn’t so much as glimpse at his ruined outfit, his focus trained solely on his prey.
Desperate, Nelle cried out the world’s flimsiest excuse. “Luric, y-you can’t enter someone’s property uninvited!” And of course, he paid no heed to it whatsoever.
The man in turn started scurrying backwards when he saw Luric approach. “S-Stay away! Stay away from me, or I’ll-”
“Or you’ll what?” Luric asked, undiluted contempt dripping out of his words. “Hit me? Kick me? Break my bones and get aroused at the sound of them cracking?”
The man slipped and fell. Every time he tried to get back up on his feet to run away, he slipped again, and his movements only got more erratic as Luric came closer. Luric took his time walking towards him, obviously enjoying and wanting to prolong the sorry display.
“Luric! Stop this!” Nelled called out to him.
He kept sauntering over to the frightened man, until he was standing right above him. Now the man was still, fear freezing him in place, and staring up at Luric. He was heaving loud puffs of air, how frightened people tended to do when bracing themselves for the inevitable, but there was a hint of defiance in his wide, tear-filled eyes.
One last try before she would reach into her pocket. “Luric, I’m warning you!”
“I’m not going to kill him, if that’s what you are afraid of. I’m not even going to hurt him,” he answered calmly without turning to look at her. “I just want to show him something.”
He moved to straddle the man lying on the ground, one leg placed firmly on each side. With his back turned to her, Luric’s long black cape obscured her view of the other man. Nelle panicked.
She opened her coat to have fast access to the pocket of her trousers. There, she felt the metallic coldness of the gun the Institute had instructed her to use if the situation called for it. But she didn’t take it out. Not yet. She was only allowed to use it against him if he turned and became dangerous. Luric said he wouldn’t hurt the man, and she wanted to believe him.
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Then Luric bent down, and she saw his head dip down underneath the line of his shoulders. To bring his face closer to the man, but he didn’t move to kneel. The man, from what little she could see of him, tried to sink further into the mud to get away from him.
She kept her eyes fixed on Luric’s movements, and gripped the gun. She was trembling. Nelle had never hurt anyone before, how could she be expected to shoot someone?
She should have never agreed to this mission. She had simply been upset to see the message that had been sent to their office be ignored or down-right rejected by every field supervisor that she had presented it to just because it seemed so mundane and too out of everyone’s way. A town had sent for help and nobody cared. These people didn’t deserve to be so callously dismissed because they were small and far away. She had thought it unfair and volunteered to take the mission herself after being told that it was simply a meager shadow creature that they would be facing. But she was way in over her head, and they hadn’t even encountered the monster yet.
“Luric, please!”
Her plea, like everything else, fell on deaf ears. And to her horror, she saw Luric’s shape change. His frame was growing larger. He still retained his human appearance mostly, but there was no denying that he had gone beyond what she had seen him manifest on the train. And she wasn’t even looking at the worst of it. The man, who could see Luric’s now demonic features up close, let out a terrified cry.
“NO! PLEASE BAAR, PROTECT ME!”
Luric threw his head back and laughed. It was the most dreadful sound she had ever heard. Low, guttural, and malicious.
She took out her gun and pointed it at him. Any other time she would have been embarrassed by the way her voice was trembling, but right now, all she wanted was to end this moment.
“Luric, get away from that man or I will be forced-forced to shoot you!”
The fact that he even heard her over his own laughter was surprising, and this time he even answered.
“And then what? You gonna fight the monster on your own?”
“If I have to. I’m dealing with one right now, the way I see it.”
“It’s like I said, you got your monsters mixed up.”
She didn’t understand, was too high strung to try to make sense of his cryptic message. She heard that a Blight’s mind gets altered too when they turn. This meant she had no one to reason with.
“Look around you,” he continued. “Does this look like the work of a sane man to you?”
The pigs? Was he saying that the man had done this to them? Yes, it was sick. Absolutely atrocious. But- “It’s not our place to punish a depraved mind. You have no right to do this.”
“I have every right to do this,” he barked, but didn’t turn around, “the grave we were at just now, that was his work as well.”
Oh, no! “D-Don’t try to justify this. If he were truly a murderer, he would’ve been locked up long ago.”
“In any other place, maybe. No one here ever raised a hand against this freak. Everyone knew that he had a screw loose, and all they ever did was stay out of his way, let him act out his perversions against his own animals, because there’s no law against that. And that was the only thing that kept him from going after people. The law. But he must have been harboring a mighty desire to let out his vile impulse against a person for years, because the moment the opportunity arose he jumped at it with so much enthusiasm.”
Now Nelle understood. “They let him take it out on you!”
“Yes. And my guardian, as well. The person who raised me.” His cadence betrayed his grief, but it was so strange to hear something so human be conveyed in such an inhuman voice. “The person who raised and harbored an abomination, so the rest of this town must’ve thought he deserved a good beating too. I didn’t see it happen, the beating I mean, but this guy here was with the group of men that him dragged away Mr. Carshtin’s limp, broken body. I didn’t understand back then, didn’t know the extent of his derangement until I was given over to him. Oh, he wasn’t the only one who hurt me, but he was the only one who really enjoyed himself while doing it.”
Luric’s shoulders started to tremble. “You know what that’s like? To be battered to a pulp, and see someone take so much pleasure in it? I was the demon? I was the abomination? He is allowed to exist because he looks human, and the others accept him because he is part of the community and one of them? Tell me, do you think it’s fair that someone like him gets to live his life freely and exempt of consequences, while my guardian lies dead in the ground? And I'm not allowed to even terrorize him a little as payback?”
Nelle closed her eyes, and drew a deep breath to calm herself. “No,” she answered him. He turned his head a little at that, and she saw a bright yellow iris peek at her from behind black tresses. She needed to get this out before he showed her his entire monstrous visage, knowing it could cause all her resolve to crumble. “No, you are not, Luric. No matter how this man may have wronged you, you are not entitled to vigilante justice. You cannot take the law into your own hands.”
“FUCK YOU!” He whirled around, and Nelle finally saw his face.
It was the eyes that she found most terrifying; large, bulging, bright yellow, and staring at her in unabashed fury. His face was scrunched up in a fierce, animalistic snarl, his fangs fully bared to her. She tightened her grip on her gun, and that’s when she realized she had laced her finger around the trigger guard instead of the actual trigger. But she was too afraid to move now. Afraid that Luric would see her mistake, would take her moving her finger on the trigger now as a threat, and move to attack. He would be faster than her, of that she was certain. She remained still and silent while he blared his rage at her. “FUCK YOU AND YOUR HIGH AND MIGHTY BULLSHIT. THE LAW DIDN’T APPLY TO ME WHEN I NEEDED IT, BUT HE IS ALLOWED TO HIDE BEHIND IT?! SIMPLY BECAUSE HE IS NORMAL AND I’M NOT? HUMAN RIGHTS ARE JUST FOR HUMANS, IS THAT WHAT YOU’RE SAYING?”
He was breathing hard, his eyes boring into her. There was a change in his expression, something more akin to irritation rather than anger, and he suddenly lowered his face to look away. He was visibly winding down, his breathing relaxing, posture straightening and shoulders slightly slouching. He seemed a little defeated.
He was changing back too, but his appearance wasn’t completely human yet when he spoke again. “Justice? It's too late for that. What I want -What I deserve is revenge! But I'm not allowed that, am I? It's not right. It’s not moral.” He gave a dry chuckle. “I was too small and weak to fight against the unfairness back then, but now that the tide has turned and I’m the one with all the power, I’m supposed to be nice and play by the rules. Be more accommodating for you poor, defenseless folks.”
“Luric, that’s not what I mea-”
“Forget it.” He looked back in disgust at the sorry state of the man, crawling in the mud and whimpering like a whipped dog. “I have no choice but to be content with this.” With one finale inhale and exhale, the last traces of his blight disappeared.
Luric was walking towards her now, but still not meeting her eyes. When he jumped the fence and landed within five feet of her, Nelle winced. She had lowered her arms, but she was still griping the gun very tightly. Her muscles were numb, and she couldn’t feel her fingers anymore. She might need help to disentangle them because right now she couldn’t get her hands to unclench.
She watched Luric carefully, studied his features, his hands, his movement, making sure there was not a single trace of his other form left on him. She would probably make a nervous habit of this. It was mind boggling how easily he could do that, look like any other person one moment, and then be something so frightfully inhuman the very next. Like he was simply changing a coat instead of skin. There should be something separating these two sides, she thought, something definite and detectable that could serve as a proper warning and a means to stop it from happening. Because how could she work with someone so dangerous and volatile, and who could harness so much destructive power at the blink of an eye?
She wanted to go home, Nelle realized dejectedly. She didn’t want to do this anymore. She didn’t want to stay in this cold, unwelcoming town, or be anywhere near this bitter and unstable man.
“Sorry,” she heard someone mumble. Luric? She couldn’t be sure, since he had turned his head the other way, and it had been spoken so softly, she might have imagined it.
“If you want to go back to the inn, you should,” he told her. “I’ll go talk to Egbrim now. No more detours, I promise.”
Was he feeling contrite?
Was this his attempt at conciliation?
If so, was he doing it because of the gun, because of the report, or because of her?
Whatever the reason, it helped, even if only a little. She’d take reluctant remorse over unhinged anger any day.
Nelle finally let her arms relax, her fingers loosening around the gun. Once the tension left her body, she noticed how sore the muscles and joints were. Gods, she had been so terrified.
Something was tickling her cheek - probably a loose strand of hair - but when she brought a hand to her face to wipe it away, she touched wetness. It was on both of her cheeks. Thick streaks of water she traced up to her eyes with fingertips. When had she started crying? Immediately, she looked back at Luric. Had he seen? He must have, she realized despairingly. He wasn’t looking at her now, but she was sure he had seen her tears. The sudden change in demeanor earlier, from aggressive to pensive, and now to apologetic, made sense. She had made him feel guilty by crying in front of him.
Nelle felt like dying of shame.
Was it understandable to cry given the circumstances? Yes. That still didn't make it right. Luric had done what she asked, had stopped harassing the man like she wanted him to, yet Nelle still felt like she had failed; because it hadn’t been her will, her reasoning, or her competency that had dissuaded Luric, but her weakness. She couldn’t help but hate herself for that. In her head, she could hear Headmistress Seraclea proclaim in her typical condescending way how disgraceful it was for a woman to use tears as a weapon to persuade a man to do her bidding. To willingly embrace fragility so it may be used to coax protectiveness and favoritism, instead of trying to cultivate strength and integrity. Nelle had always agreed with that wholeheartedly. Had always looked down on her fellow students, delicate ladies in training, because they applied these tactics almost instinctively. A bat of long eyelashes, a twirl of a finger through a loose lock, a pout of delicate lips, and if all else failed, in come the waterworks. It even disgusted her to some extent, and she felt shame on behalf of those girls. Cry if you must, but do so privately. Do it to ease your heart, not to gain something.
It almost made her want to apologize to Luric too, but she was well aware of how ridiculous that was.
This wouldn’t do. Not this pathetic state she was in, not her childish need to run home and hide under her bed because things were difficult. She would not abandon her responsibility so easily. She had to be stronger than this.
Luric had to prove himself to be trustworthy, but she also wanted to prove back that she could be more reliable too.
“No, I am coming with you,” she said forcibly. She pocketed her gun, and righted her coat. The trepidation hadn’t left her system completely. Her legs were jittery from exhaustion and she felt a bit light headed too. But she would press on.
Luric looked back at her, nodded once, and lead the way.