KHAZUUL

"What is it, Saffron?" Flint asks as he notices the girl's hesitation. "Anything we should know about in there along with the sack? It looks like a powerful lightning strike, nothing more."

Cutwell was suddenly conscious again of the metal arm hanging off of him. He wondered if he’d feel the hum of electricity drawn to it in the half second it would take to reach him and end his life.

Then, he wonders if he ought to simply send the thing forward by itself, and have it fetch the bag from its place in the hole, while the others kept their distance.

Sow moves to carefully inspect the tree and the hole, creeping to the edge of it. She is listening for Saffron's answer as she moves, slowly and quietly, one foot in front of the other...

The reality of being in "enemy" territory properly sinks in when they cross the ridge and get a view of the Dreadwing's basecamp. It's as impressive if not more impressive than the Blackskulls'. "I wonder if it's as sparsely operated as the Blackskulls'?" he whispers to his companions.

---

Once they find the location of the hidden relic, Freki notices Cutwell's metal arm fidgeting as he stares at the burned out trunk and guesses he's considering using the arm to retrieve Saffron's sack.

"Your iron arm might be a good option in case something with a nasty sting crawled in there to escape the storm," he encourages Cutwell.

"Could be, couldn’t it?" Cutwell murmurs in response, wondering if what was inside was more or less valuable than the arm on his shoulder…

He turns his body away from the others for a moment, before wrenching the thing off in his practiced way.

"Its got a knack to it." he says, turning back to the others. "Right then, let’s have a look!" he says, sending his arm forth for the first time in many weeks in this way.

Cutwell's arm advances into the orifice like an inchworm, climbing into the charred tree corpse. He can feel everything through the appendage - the dampness of the muddy ground; the gritty, charcoal bark that flakes off as the metal fingers dig into it.

As it reaches into the dark orifice, he feels around. It is repulsively warm and fleshy inside, pulsing and throbbing. After some searching, Cutwell's metal hand brushes against a strap, and he hauls out a pack out of the tree. It is covered in a sticky mucus, that pull part into stringy strands as the arm pulls it out of the tree.

The canvas crumples to the ground, nearly empty. It is light, maybe five pounds. The flap is secured with a cord tie, and Saffron confirms this is the pack she put into the tree, although she has no recollection of mucus.

Flint grimaces as he holds back a dry-heave. There were very few things that affected the ex-Marcguard in this way, and the slimy mucus appeared to be one of them.

"What the devil? You say you don't remember the mucus, Saffron? I wonder what that's all about. Can your arm open the package, Cutwell?"

Sow watches in mild shock as Cutwell’s arm does what it does — the jittering, strange motions of the detached limb frankly unnerves her far more than the mucus and slime that it pulls from the hole in the ground along with the satchel. As the others gather around the bag, waiting for Saffron, she edges closer to the awful, wet orifice it was retrieved from.

"What… is it?" she asks aloud, hoarsely. It’s unclear whether she’s talking about the bag or the hole…

Freki takes a step back as Cutwell's arm pulls out the mucus coated sack, his face squinting in disgust.

"I don't know, but I'm betting something lives in there."

"Careful now, those could be digestive juices," Freki adds hoping someone else is going to take the lead in opening the sack.

Cutwell eyes the others, and tries not to scowl as the woman claims ignorance.

"Good thing we took precautions, ain’t it?" is all he says, as he drags the thing closer to them.

He doesn’t know if he should even bother asking the woman about surprises stored inside. Still, good manners…

"Safe to open, is it?"

Flint stares wide-eyed at the package, then at Saffron, then back at the package waiting for the girl's answer.

Stepping back quickly to avoid the slop of sludge, Sow frowns, digs into the shoulder bag she wears on one hip, and tosses something into the orifice -- a root or dead plant of some kind.

"Whats that, a tin whistle?" Cutwell remarks, squinting at the thing in the growing twilight. The twilight always messed with the man’s eyes, and he suddenly remembered the odd beastmen marching through the gloom last night. Their own instrument seemed a good deal mightier than the one before them now.

"Uck."

Flint takes another step back as the mucous is expelled from the hole. The sound it makes is almost as bad as the sight of it. Watching Sow fling something into the opening, he curiously looks on, but his hand grips the hilt of his sword just in case.

Sow's withered root causes a violent effect within the tree trunk. The gurgling noise amplifies, the trunk shakes, and the orifice vomits forth more thick globs of mucus mixed with rotten pulp and blood. Afterward, it is silent.

Not standing close enough to the not-book to see inside when it was opened, Sow kneels right at the edge of the gaping hole in the ground and peers in, trying to see just what was making its home in there.

"What is it?" she repeats the others as her eyes -- and spear -- search the corners of the disgusting wound in the earth.

Holding her spear tight as she peers into that subterranean gloom for long seconds, the brown-haired girl adds, "Can someone bring a light...?"