The unholy grail sat atop a stone pedestal beneath the butcher shop. Enough light crept through the mismatched floorboards overhead to cast the small space in murky grey, so Bleak was glad of his glowstone’s white aura. Without it, he might not have been able to appreciate the blood dripping down the walls and pooling around the pedestal. Atmospheric to be sure, but the whole effect was ruined by knowing that he was under a butcher shop.
Bleak shook his head and applied another line of pine oil on his upper lip, which did little more than give the rotten stench of the place a woodsy accent.
Not all the blood had been designed by the butcher to pour down from above. Slaughtered animals provided most of the congealing pond through which Bleak splashed uncaringly. It came up to the tops of his well-worn boots and seeped through, squishing between his toes. A fresh stream dripped through the floorboards where the butcher’s body marked the only resistance Bleak had encountered.
Finding the grail had been much easier than he’d anticipated, which was why he suspected it to be another false lead. But he didn’t know. For that he’d need to take a sip.
And lose another finger.
Already down all ten toes, the fingers from his left hand, and the pinky on his right, Bleak could spare but one more finger and still be able to grip his sword. Even so, he’d lost too much control. It was time to start using the wrist blades Slacktooth had cunningly crafted. Like the prosthetics he wore to replace his missing toes, the devices rubbed him raw and itched like crazy when he practiced using them.
Even with the wrist blades, he wasn’t ready to part with his remaining fingers unless absolutely necessary. Next time, he’d lose an ear.
No one had said the path to immortality would be easy. On the contrary, he’d lost track of how many fell beasts and holy men he’d slain in its pursuit. His body had become a topography of scars, as much flesh lost to tearing teeth and biting swords as to his own amputations.
In what had become an unconscious gesture, he patted the leather pouch at his side, reassuring himself that its valuable contents remained. All would be amended when he found the true grail.
With that thought in mind, Bleak stepped over the rough ground, stooped over to prevent banging his head on the thick wooden planks above, and approached the grail for a better look. He raised the glowstone and groaned. If the blood hadn’t been cringeworthy enough, the grail itself accomplished the task.
Some unrecognizable creature’s skull, possibly human, rested atop two skeletal hands, themselves forming a kind of cup to cradle the skull. It seemed to wink as his glowstone’s light passed back and forth in examination, filling the empty orifice with constantly shifting shadows. The hands had been fused atop two pairs of feet, the bones of which had been split neatly in half to create a sturdy quadripedal base.
By coincidence, the butcher’s body had fallen above the grail so that his blood still dripped onto the front of the rim, slower now than it had after delivering the killing blow. Still, the torrent of lifeblood had managed to nearly fill the grail while the rest had splattered across the skull’s face, creating a macabre mask.
It was entirely too on the nose for Bleak. He’d drank from wooden grails, golden cups fit for a king, and even one fashioned out of an oily black material he’d never seen before. Whoever had produced this cup had taken the idea of an unholy grail too literally.
“Or they’ve a sick sense of humor,” Bleak said in his deep growl. His voice was more befitting a wild beast than the man he somewhat resembled.
Hard living had stripped him of nearly all the humanity he’d once had, which hadn’t been much to start. Leather armor and thick cloak were well-maintained, but the body beneath, while hardened and healthy, had only been washed by the occassional rainstorm and slog through a waist-deep river. Tangled black hair hung in unevenly shorn patches where it had been torn out or cut by too-close strokes from any number of bladed weapons.
Bleak set the glowstone upon the pedestal and lifted the grail. He didn’t expect to feel any tingles of magic, so he wasn’t disappointed when nothing happened. His fingers slipped, finding poor purchase on the blood-soaked grail’s slippery stem, but he’d been three-fingered for several months and didn’t lose his grip.
The skull’s toothy grin seemed to be mocking him, so he flashed his own cheshire smile, poking his tongue through the gap where four teeth had been knocked out on the left side, creating a neat square. As if challenging the skull to a staring contest, he looked deep into the empty sockets for a very long time without blinking.
Whether he found something there or felt a shift in hidden energies, he gave no sign other than to raise the grail toward the butcher’s leaking body. He had a full flask of spring water, more than enough to rinse the cup, but the thought never entered his mind.
“To immortality,” he said and drank deeply of his latest victim’s blood.
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Bleak emptied the cup with four large gulps, tilting his head further back with each, unmindful of how crimson rivulets leaked out across several days of salt and pepper stubble. Another man might have grown a beard to conceal the scars criss-crossing Bleak’s lower face, but the puckered white lines were so various that it had become nearly impossible to grow a proper beard. The one time he’d tried, it had looked like several smaller beards had been stitched together on his face.
Or, as one man had astutely observed before Bleak broke his nose: “Looks like a bear took a chipmunk-filled shit on yer mouth.” It had been a good insult, so Bleak had spared the man’s life. In truth, he desperately hoped to use the barb on someone else one day.
Danging the grail over his wide open mouth, Bleak shook the final drops free. He slammed the grail down on the pedestal, and with a serious look, belched for a good five seconds.
Looking altogether satisfied, Bleak wiped his mouth carelessly with the right sleeve of his cloak. His left hand dipped into a special scabbard and after releasing a lever with his thumb, came up with the wrist blade securely strapped around his wrist. He set his right hand on the stone pedestal near his glowstone and flexed his fingers wide before setting the the wrist blade’s razor sharp edge against his ring finger.
Before he could cut, a gentle sizzle of magical energies filled the butcher’s shop followed by the sudden tread of heavy footsteps starting from the center of the floor.
“That’s new,” he said and considered not cutting off his finger. Bleak didn’t know what was happening, only that nothing like it had occurred all the other times he’d found grails. He couldn’t be sure it was connected to his drinking from the cup.
He’d long ago decided that removing digits was the surest way to test for newly acquired immortality, so he took a few steps around the pedestal, giving him a clear view of the still-open trapdoor, and returned his attention to the finger that wouldn’t amputate itself.
He waited for the newcomer to find him. The stranger briefly explored the shop before starting down the stairs, heavy armor clanking noisily with each step. The fool hadn’t brought a light source and paused halfway down the stairs, his eyes adjusting to the light.
Bleak estimated when his visitor would be able to see clearly and decided to hold his hand before his face. With a waggle of his fingers, he greeted the man. Then, he lopped off his ring finger with an effortless snick of his wrist blade. All the while, he grinned behind his upheld hand.
“What in the Fourteen Hells?” the man asked and began to retch noisily.
Bleak couldn’t have said whether the man had reacted to the cavern or to his own digit-removing ritual. Either way, the man looked like serious trouble in that thick armor. As he rose from vomiting, Bleak reached casually behind his back and unslung his crossbow, slowed only momentarily as his remaining two fingers searched for a good grip on the thing. In a fluid motion, he steadied the weapon on his left arm, took a second or two lining up his shot while the man squinted toward Bleak, and fired.
The bolt left the crossbow with a solid thunk, and entered the man’s eye with a meaty squelch, snapping the man’s head back. His body followed suit, crashing back upon the stairs then sliding down them with a deafening clatter.
Bleak’s attention had already returned to his bloody hand and its newly missing finger. His little show had done a better job of disarming his opponent than he could have guessed, but it had a downside. He’d lost track of the finger when it splashed into the pool of blood and now had to squat down and rake his two-fingered hand through the stuff.
It didn’t take long. Swirling his hand in an ever-widening spiral, he snagged the lost digit after less than a minute. Still squating, he gave the finger a good shake to remove most of the viscous blood that had settled on the cavern floor. After casting the grail a dubious glance, still not believing it to be the famed relic he sought, Bleak pressed the severed finger to its stump and waited.
The skin crawled back together. Sensation returned. He bent the ring finger experimentally a few times then bit it rather hard, more than pleased with the resulting pain.
Barely able to restrain his excitement, Bleak tore at the pouch on his belt, gripping it in his good hand while pulling the drawstrings with his teeth. As he did so, another unusual thing happened.
The armored man struggled to his feet. More accurately, he tried. The weighty armor definitely hindered his attempt, but the slimy blood-covered floor seemed to be doing most of the work. Despite his struggles, the man cast a hate-filled look at Bleak, his remaining eye doing twice the work of conveying just how enraged the man was.
The man still being alive wasn’t that unusual. Bodies were filled with bones that had a tendency to deflect arrows, bolts, and even sword thrusts in unexpected directions. Under normal circumstances, Bleak would have stabbed the man through the heart a few times for good measure. But he’d been preoccupied.
The truly unusual thing happened when the man froze after finally getting his feet beneath him. All the color leeched from the cavern at its furthest reaches, drawing toward Bleak like a ravenous shadow. Everything it passed disappeared, swallowed by black until it reached Bleak. The world was gone. He stood alone in an empty space, drawstring still held in his mouth.
So he cradled the open pouch in the crook of his left arm and fished around, pulling objects out then replacing them to one side until he found what he sought. A pinky finger. He couldn’t be sure it was the right one, but he popped it into his mouth and pressed the appropriate stub to it.
“Nasty!” a voice said from directly in front of Bleak. The vaguest outlines of a man or creature were pushing themselves through the darkness. Only the thing’s wide yellow eyes and too-white smile were clear. The teeth barely parted as the shape hissed words with the utmost satisfaction. “Wonderful. Truly-truly. But nasty.”
Bleak ignored the presence popping each of his fingers back into place as quickly as he could dig them out of the pouch.
“Oh…” the voice squealed with delight. Bleak absently wondered if it would fully manifest as some sort of human/pig hybrid. “You’re different! No groveling. I like that. Not trying to kill me either as so many do.”
“I’ll kill you,” Bleak growled. From his squat, he dropped unceremoniously to the ground and started pulling his boots off with his reconstructed hands. “In a minute.”