KHAZUUL

Outside the shelter and away from the grim work Cutwell is about to undertake, Flint comes face to face with Sow in the dark. The girl had already vacated the building and has been waiting in the rain. Her poncho keeps her partly dry, but water drips from the miserable girl’s nose and chin.

"What’s going on in there?" she asks softly, barely audibly in the storm and wind. "I thought we were moving on…"

"Nothing good I can tell you that. We were moving on, we are moving on but not until.... Cutwell is, uh ... there's no easy way to say this..."

Despite the rain and the drips on Sow's face, Flint tenderly wipes a bead of water from the girl's cheek. "Cutwell is putting the men out of their misery. They asked him to do it. To end their miserable lives."

Freki's eyes grow wide in shock at the sudden transformation of the stranger as he tries to react ...

When handing Cutwell the darts, Freki had kept a third dart in his hand just in case, so he's able to quickly launch it at the monster before it reaches them.

"Oi!" Cutwell calls to Sow and Flint. "Get in here. He’s some kind of beast, ain’t he?"

And this lot have probably been made the same way… he thinks, and prepares to carry out their wish, so that they might not be overcome by their illness and so change their minds.

"Spose to take his head, is it?" he asks, meaning both for gold, and the appropriate way to dispatch a creature like that.

The fanged demon is already slumping to the ground by the time Sow heeds Cutwell’s call, brandishing her spear defensively as she comes, sopping, back into the structure…

Flint enters, stands, and stares, mouth agape at the sight before them.

Once he pulls his eyes away he remarks to the others,"I've never seen a demon before. Well done. I'm glad it's dead," he says, wiping the rain from his face.

Freki breaths a sigh of relief as the demon collapses. That was a close call.

"It's not dead yet, just tranquilized. Help me drag it outside and you can take off it's head," he says to Flint.

"We better be quick about it then. I'm not keen on having it wake up."

Flint offers his hand and back to help drag the beast outside after which he will separate its head from its body with his sword. At times like these he is glad that he's always kept the sharpest of edges on his sword.

Making her way to Cutwell as Flint and Freki drag the crazed old man outside, Sow grips her spear with white knuckles, on edge. "Do -- do you need help? With -- them?" she asks, glancing at the ailing men with nervous eyes.

Cutwell watches as the two men carry the strange beast out the door, and to its helpless end. Then he rolls up his sleeves, and turns to Sow.

"Said he ate their flesh, ain’t he? Stands to reason that he’ll have infected them with something or other, don’t it?" he says, and then nods, acknowledging that he needs the woman’s help.

"Give them this to start." he says, handing her the darts.

He speaks to the men then, even though he isn’t sure they can hear him all too well.

"Won’t be long now, lads! We’ll sort you out, won’t we? No need to worry about it all now." he says, as tenderly as he can.

He mimes to Sow.

Inject them first…
A merciful death…
Decapitation…

"Just in case." he says, cocking a wary eyebrow at the woman.

Sow's eyes are wide and glassy as she considers the task Culwell lays out before her. Then, laying down her spear, she takes the darts carefully, wary of their sharp and glistening points.

"Where?" she asks the man in a whisper as she kneels over the first doomed man, wondering about exactly where to jab the first dart...

"Arse is good." he replies, not keen on searching over they bodies all too much, if something is catching.

Once they’re out, he’ll be ready to put his surgical knife across their throats.

Outside the ruin, Saffron watches from the rain-slicked stair, her poncho flapping wildly in the wind. She's been particularly rattled by the stranger, and she seems determined to see it put to death. She reaches for Freki's hand, in need of the Northerner's strength. Flint's blade slices through the stranger's neck with the famed Marchguard precision. The stranger's head rolls unceremoniously into the mud, the mirror spectacles falling to the wayside, and Saffron lets out a long, exhausted breath.

Inside the temple, Sow and Cutwell prepare to put the two men out of their misery. The one that is semi-conscious rasps a few last words. "Not a ruin ... a relic ... light the flame ... "

"What should we do with ... that?" Flint asks Saffron and Freki. "Burn the two? Bury the head. What does one do with creatures like this? We'd have our work cut out for us in this rain, though."

Sow is jabbing the one man in the posterior when the other speaks up, mumbling about the relic, and the flame. Her eyes meet Cutwells as she prepares the second dart and moves into position, wondering wordlessly if they should stop and first here more from this man…

Cutwell looks at Sow, and searches her face. He wonders if they ought to let whatever secret this man was trying to impart simply die with him. Easier not to fuss with all that stuff. Could be the were-fever already taking hold, desperately trying to keep whatever was at work here alive.

He clears his throat, and relents:

"Whats that, then?" he asks, hoping the man can speak a little clearer.

The man lapses into an agonized unconsciousness, unable to speak more.