Ashling's Gift

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

The courier and I stood there, dumbfounded by what was lying on the table between us.

It looked like the severed arm of a wooden mannequin who had the unfortunate luck of not being possessed by a spirit in time to escape a house fire.

I say it looked like it--because it certainly smelled like rotting human arm meat.

And yet, this was no form of decomposition that I was familiar with. It very much looked like the flesh had been burning like wood. The skin was a pallid ashen gray, with the top few layers of skin splitting and curling upwards in chunks, like the bark of a piece of firewood, revealing the decaying muscle underneath

I cocked an eyebrow at the man across from me. “You didn't... touch it, did you?”

He shook his head. “It was already sealed up tightly in the box when I arrived at the village.”

“Good,” I replied from behind the piece of cloth held up to my nose in a poor attempt to keep the fetid stench away. I sprouted a few vines from my exposed arms, and in tandem with my free hand, picked up some sterile examining tools off a nearby metal try and began poking, prodding, slicing, and peeling away.

Yep, this certainly was a dead someone's diseased, severed arm.

I pulled up a set of magnifying glasses hanging from a swiveling boom arm and leaned in closer to get a better look at the limb. I was looking for any signs of an obvious source of whatever had done this. With the tools I had within reach, there was no way to tell exactly what I was dealing with--I'd have to consult piles of books, ask around among my Hand of the Mind associates and assign chunks of this arm's flesh for experimentation, maybe interview a healer or two...

The courier was getting fidgety, obviously uncomfortable being around both this arm and myself, despite having more reason to fear the former. “Did any letters or documents come with this package?”

“Yes,” he replied, tapping a thick envelope on the table sitting next to the opened box.

I nodded. “Thank you. You can go now. Ask Jeanne to give you your fee on your way out.”

He nodded in kind, muttered a thanks, turned on his heels, and disappeared out the laboratory door.

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

My vines set down the probing tools, and swept up the papers. I pushed the boom away, stuffed the piece of cloth I had up against my nose into a lab coat pocket. I ripped the wax seal off, opened the envelope, and began thumbing through the contents.

Inside, I found a crudely-drawn traveler's map to help one navigate their way to the village that seemed to fall upon hard times recently, several sheets of observation notes torn out a notebook that had belonged to one of the town's physicians (now deceased), some other things of little importance, and a hastily-written note pleading for some sort of assistance. This last item I held in the air in front of me with a couple threads of briar as I walked through my personal work space towards the wash bin.

Doctor Von Morrigan, it began, we have sent you all of the materials you've asked for. The rate that this accursed infliction is spreading through the village seems to be slowing down, which is all we can ask for at this moment. There still seems to be no cure, but our healers and alchemists assure me that they are doing their best in their search.

I just wonder how much time we have left, and I am afraid.

I've received word that there has been sightings of a stranger in town, visiting the homes of those who soon become sick, screaming throughout all hours in excruciating pain as the gray spots on their bodies grow bigger and split their flesh. But without concrete evidence of this stranger's infiltrations, let alone any solid descriptions of him or her, it is not an avenue we can explore.

We may require someone of your particular expertise sooner, rather than later. I request that you travel to my village as quick as you are able, for we are running out of viable options, and we cannot let this affliction spread any further.

Safe travels,

K.

(I, uh, should explain that for matters of personal research, I address myself simply as Von Morrigan. Should anyone recognize my true name, look at my research pattern, know who I work for, and then add it all up... Yeah, there could be problems.)

I packed a small traveling bag with several changes of clothes, a couple books, and some experimentation tools, informed my associates that I would be away for a few weeks, and was out the door.

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

I can't say I remember much of the travel to this small village in the hilly landscape of southern Salvar; there was a lot of farms, a decent amount of trees, and surprisingly enough, no bandit raids. I arrived in Falden after three days on the road, and immediately sought a place to stay until my business was done.

With a gloved hand, I turned the iron handle and pushed open the door to an establishment called The Bird and Barb . I was instantly greeted with the smells of lunch cooking in the kitchen behind the bar. Thick, juicy cuts of beef, fresh baked bread, hot soup; all being prepared in anticipation of the midday crowd... My mouth began to water. I was horribly tempted to just go ahead and place an order, but I had to set up shop.

An elderly woman with wispy gray hair and a weathered face looked up from a book from behind the counter. Her smile was warm enough to melt the snows of Berevar. “Is there something I can help you with, dear?”

“Yes, please,” I responded kindly. “I have some business here for the next few weeks, and I was hoping that I could rent a room for the entirety of my stay.”

“Well, that's certainly possible, I suppose...” The old woman scratched her chin. “But... I don't know if you're aware of what's been happening in town, recently. We've run into a spot of trouble with an outbreak of sorts, if you believe it. ”

I nodded. “Yes, actually, I have heard. I traveled here from Tirel to meet up with a few of the other healers here in order to try and figure out what's going on and find a cure.”

“Nasty business, this sickness,” the woman said as she shook her head. “From what I hear from the patrons, it doesn't appear to be very contagious... But still... I hear that if you get sick, it's a very slow, very painful way to go.” The image of the severed arm that looked like a burned hunk of wood popped back into my mind.

“I've seen some drawings of the infected, yes. I'll make sure to avoid anyone who's contracted it.” I quickly wished to change the subject. “So, how much is it for a room for two weeks?”

The smile returned to the woman's face. “Ah, yes, of course, dear. It's ten gold per night. Breakfast is served at dawn, lunch starting at eleven, dinner around five. Your room will be the second door on the right on the second floor.”

I thanked her, snatched up the key and my traveling bags, and climbed the stairs leading to my room. My temporary quarters were small, as most of these places tend to be: eight feet wide, eleven feet deep, with the only decorations being a twin-sized bed, a simple wooden chair, a chest with a lock on it at the foot of the bed, and a dresser with four drawers and a mirror over it. I threw the canvas bags on the bed, undid the clasps keeping them closed, and began setting up shop.

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

I should explain my curiosity in the subject of the weird affliction that has gripped Falden.

When I got back to Salvar after the Eiskalt debacle, I spent a lot of my free time furiously researching what had happened to me.

I have no recollection of the events leading up to or immediately following what I had to presume was my being kidnapped and somehow transformed into the mess that I am now.

Thanks to some late night reading in, of all things, a collection of fables; I at least had a name to go off of.

Briarheart.

The story involved a creature that sounded remarkably similar to me. It had vine-knit limbs and a predisposition to spreading diseases. Using that story as a jumping-off point, I began tearing through any other tomes on mystical, mythical, and unnatural creatures I could find.

Eventually, I had happened upon exactly what I was looking for.

It was only three pages of notes written by a hasty hand, but it was enough to go off of.

Briarheart.

Created by unnatural means through a series of occult ceremonies, Briarhearts are beings that are highly attuned to nature. Some are able to command and control various forms of flora and fauna; some have more of an effect on the darker forms of life such as viruses and fungus. All of them see essences of dryads and other nature elementals fused into a organ that acts very much like a heart, and inserted into the host body in the place of their proper heart. From there, these essences begin working to slowly replace their host's natural body parts with plant matter and other tools that the new Briarheart needs in order to do its work in the world.

I had been one of the lucky--or perhaps unlucky ones who had become of the darker sort. I developed the ability to breathe plague, ooze acid, and infect living and dead beings with the Nemo's Marionette fungus that allows me to control their actions.

But, there was one small aside in these three pages that piqued my interest the most.

It was this line that brought me to Falden.

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

The next morning I woke up bright and early, took a bath, and helped myself to a breakfast of potato pancakes with syrup, some sausages, and a glass of milk. I gathered some notes on this curious affliction hitting the town and set out to meet my contact here, who had been the one that sent me the rotting sample.

His name was Kerrigan; an alchemist and physician of some minor renown. Really good at healing potions and salves, my sources said. I reached out to him once I heard about this strange disease. He was apprehensive about cooperating at first; in his early correspondences, he hinted that the council that rule this town were looking to keep a lid on the whole matter. After some poking and prodding, and a promise to divulge any information I could dig up that would be of service to him, the doc began feeding me little scraps of info.

One time, I sent word that, sadly, I was unable to be of any help from where I was, and that I would need to make the trip out in order to do anything. It was less of an offer and more of a statement; thanks to some of my recent findings on the whole Briarheart thing, I had taken quite an interest in discovering the root of what has happened to the citizens of Falden.

But I'll get to that eventually, perhaps.

Kerrigan's place was a few blocks off the main thoroughfare, in a modest stone building with a shingled roof. A wooden sign with the universal physician symbol burned into it decorated the space above his door. With a gloved hand, to hide me in my briar-knit glory, I gave a few quick raps on the door.

After several seconds, there was an answer. “Who is it?”

“It's me, Kerrigan. Von Morrigan.”

“Ah, yes, of course,” came the excited reply. “Come on in!”

With a twist of the handle and a push of the door, I entered the doctor's home. To say it was an absolute mess would be an understatement; everywhere I looked, there were boxes, folders full of documents (most of which probably not even sorted, I bet), jars filled with various unidentifiable samples of both the liquid and solid variety, alchemical equipment strewn about on tables, a white coat draped over the back of a tattered couch, and and a trio of unfinished meals on a table in the middle of the room. They had gone cold long ago. A bachelor, most likely.

Kerrigan stepped out from a doorway leading into another room I couldn't see and greeted me with a warm smile. He was a middle-aged man, thin but not lanky, comely but not entirely handsome, with salt-and-pepper hair and a decent enough beard. He was dressed in a buttoned-up coat much like the one draped over his couch, along with a black pair of slacks and leather boots. He was wiping his hands off on a rag as he stepped closer towards the door. “Welcome to Falden! Sorry about the mess...” He must've noticed my eyes darting across his house and my uneasy smile. “As you can probably imagine, I've been extremely busy lately with this fiasco. Don't be a stranger, come in!”

I took what I presumed was going to be my last deep breath of fresh air for a while and stepped inside.

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

We shook hands, exchanged pleasantries, and made our way through the obstacle course of his living room to the room that Kerrigan emerged from in the first place. “It's a pleasure to get to meet you face to face, Von Morrigan. I'm looking forward to working with you to solve this matter.” He turned his head and cast a worried glance at me. “The council has been riding us pretty hard to solve this matter and find a cure to... to whatever this is.

I stepped over a small stack of slightly outdated medical journals that had been imported from Corone, taking care not to spill them all over the place. “I can imagine they are. A curious infection slowly overtaking the population with no known cause or cure... That you've been dealing with this matter for a month or two and still are none the wiser can't make them feel easy.”

“True enough,” the doctor agreed. “They threw money at me and my colleagues at the beginning to help our research, but now they're just throwing insults and threats. Say that we'll be charged with the murders of each infected person if we don't give them answers soon.” He let out a sound that was half sigh, half scoff.

“Why wait this long to call for outside help?” I asked.

“Neidarr, our Chief Councilman, was hoping to keep this thing under wraps. You see, the barony has been on a bit of a campaign to remove him from power one way or another without resorting to, say, assassination. He and the rest of the group have tried to keep word from getting out about whatever it is doing this to Falden's citizens. Neidarr knows that the baron would use this as an excuse to kick him out of his chair at the table.”

“So, he's looking out more for his own hide than those he's supposed to care for.”

Kerrigan simply nodded.

The two of us stepped into a room that may as well had been in an entirely different building, separated from the rest of his home. It was impeccably organized and clean. Not a spot of any sort of mess, no samples or tools strewn about the place, not even one errant sheet of paper on the counters. It was essentially a well-lit laboratory and operation room rolled into one. It wasn't a state-of-the-art establishment, like my own labs within the Crimson Hand castle were, but they were certainly adequate for a man who mostly went on house calls.

My eyes were wandering, taking in every little detail about the room when Kerrigan spoke up. “Von Morrig--ah, excuse me. If we're going to be working together, I think that last names are too stuffy, too professional. What is your first name, anyway?”

“Veronica,” I said, and then immediately regretted it. It was my mother's name.

“Veronica,” he said with a nod. Hearing him say the word sounded like nails scraping the inside of my skull. “Well, would you like to see the latest victim?”

The doctor drew my attention to an operating table that sat in the middle of the room. A thick canvas sheet covered something with the outline of a human body, just shy of six feet tall and a little overweight. Kerrigan slid on a pair of rubber gloves, taking care to seal the edges of his sleeves inside them, and then gingerly removed the sheet.

I was grateful that the naked body was still fresh enough as to not have a horrible stench to it. He informed me that the body was brought to him yesterday, after only being infected the night prior while he had been asleep. I drew closer to get a good look at it. Yep, it was certainly that of a man who could've done with a few less meals when he was alive, but about a quarter of him was absolutely... Gosh, how do I describe it...

Remember my burned wood analogy? What with all the gray, cracked flesh and all? It holds true here as well.

Whatever it was that did him in, it had engulfed his entire left arm from fingertips to shoulder, a solid portion of the left half of his chest and presumably his back down to his pelvis, and the left half of his balding head as well. I was able to keep my gag reflex in check, since it was the rotting smell of the arm that I received from the courier and not the horrible sight of it that make me want to throw up. But still, it was quite a horrific sight.

I walked around to the other side of the table, grabbing a light that was extended down from the ceiling on a boom and maneuvered it to get a closer look at the inside of the corpse's mouth. From what I could see without reaching in and prodding around with the great unknown, it appeared that whatever had infected him and spread to the inside of his mouth and burned--no, these weren't burns--rotted the inside of his cheek and his gums.

Whatever this was, it was dangerous, it was fast, and it most certainly was lethal.

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

I looked up from the corpse at Kerrigan. “So, since we last sent letters, have you learned anything new?”

The doctor shook his head. “Unfortunately, no. We have very little to go on. I've consulted journals, other professionals overseas, a few witches, and even an old hex mage acquaintance of mine. Nobody has been able to help me. How about you?”

“I've scraped up a few tidbits here and there, but mostly useless shit from old wives' tales.” I motioned for him to slide the canvas sheet back over the dead man's body. I stepped back to the counter nailed into one of the far walls, and leaned back on it. “Well then, let's recap everything we do know. Maybe if we're both here, with the facts in the air, we'll just... stumble into something.”

Kerrigan dug deep with a gloved hand into his lab coat, producing a folded sheet of fresh paper. He unfolded it, adjusted his glasses on his face a bit, and began reading from it. “Sadly, we don't know much at all. I've learned that whatever this is is transmitted by mere touch--by accident, of course, when the husband of the first victim refused to heed my warnings and moved her body himself. Within half an hour or so, the affliction took hold on him. It spread from his hands up to his biceps inside another two hours, causing him agonizing pain as it grayed and cracked his flesh.”

I interrupted the doctor. “What happened to him?”

“He went to the hospital and they amputated both of his arms off at the shoulder.” He shook his head.

“And after that?”

His eyes scanned his sheet of paper, looking for the answer. “From what I recall hearing, the poor soul survived. The infection did not spread from the stumps after the amputation.”

I nodded. “Okay, so it sounds like whatever this is only goes skin-deep, and only damages the flesh as it spreads along the victim's body.”

“Correct,” said the man with the salt-and-pepper hair. “I've also recently discovered that infected areas are only contagious for less than one week. You can thank one of my incompetent assistants for that tidbit, when he handled the sample we sent your way without any sort of protective gear on.”

“And it's only communicable by direct contact, right?”

He nodded.

I mulled over the scant few other questions I thought of on my way here. “Do you have any kind of clue as to what kind of infection we're looking at here? Viral? Fungal? Bacterial? Any idea what the source might be? A freak outbreak, perhaps?”

Kerrigan shook his head again. The poor guy was truly at a loss for most of the important information I needed the most. “Unfortunately, the infected flesh is destroyed so utterly that every time I go to do any of the standards detection tests. I'm at a total loss as to what this actually is, so we have no way of actually treating it...” He slumped forward a bit, allowing the stress of this whole situation to show very briefly on his face.

“We'll figure it out,” I said softly in an attempt to reassure him. I jabbed a thumb in the direction of the chubby body lying on his operating table. “Tell me how this guy got here. Maybe we can work backwards towards a solution.”

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

It turns out that this man contracted this strange disease in the middle of the night, while lying in bed. His wife, who was downstairs at the time fighting a bout of insomnia, heard his intense and sudden screaming as his skin began turning gray and cracking, exposing the muscle and blood underneath. It was too late by the time the city guard arrived.

The doctor and I decided to pay a visit to the widow to see what we could find out. She was a woman in her early fifties, her long flowing hair kept in a loose ponytail that showed more gray than blond. Underneath her eyes were the bags of countless sleepless nights; considering her tragedy, it wasn't likely she would rest anytime soon. As the three of us sat in her modest living room on well-stuffed couches, I could see her trying to keep it together. To her credit, she was doing an admirable job, although I could sense that if I asked the wrong questions here she would crack.

The widow, who was named Marissa, offered Kerrigan and I tea after the good doctor introduced me as his colleague Veronica Von Morrigan, from Tirel. I cursed myself again for absentmindedly tossing out my mother's first name. The doctor sipped at his while I let mine cool on an end table next to me while she strained to recall events that happened not forty-eight hours prior.

“When Karl had gone to bed, he was perfectly fine. Nothing wrong with him at all,” she began, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees and bony hands clasped tightly together. “I had intended to follow him shortly thereafter, but I've been having trouble sleeping lately... It comes and goes, you know...”

Kerrigan spoke up. “I've told you before, Marissa. I can help you with that.”

She waved him off. “I decided to wait it out and hope that I get tired. I lit a lamp and grabbed a book, and had been reading for... goodness, it had to have been upward of two hours, by then. It was shortly after midnight when...” The widow cut herself off, trying hard to choke back a fresh round of tears. I slid along the couch closer to her, and leaned in close, closing my gloved hands around hers.

“It's okay, I promise. You don't have to recount every little detail about that night. I can't begin to imagine what you must be going through right now. But Kerrigan and I are here to help.” The doctor and I exchanged brief glances. I looked back at the widow, who now met my gaze with dry, red eyes. I offered an honest, warm smile before continuing. “The terrible, terrible thing that happened to your Karl... We want to find out what caused it. We want to find the cure. We want to make sure that nobody else suffers the same horrible fate. We just need all the help you can offer us. Can you do that for me?”

Marissa nodded weakly. I let go of her hands, and we sat in silence for several seconds. I scooched back over to my tea so I could finally take a sip of it when she spoke again. “You're more than welcome to take off your gloves and coat, if you think you'll be here for a while.”

I shook my head. “No, thank you, that's quite alright. I'm a little chilly, anyway.”

“Really?” Our host tilted her head. “I was sweating in here not too long ago. I suppose I could throw another log on the fire, if that will make you feel more comfortable.”

I quickly dismissed the notion with a wave of my hand. There was no way in hell that I was going to reveal to these people what I truly was. “No, that's quite alright. I'm fine, I promise.”

She shrugged, while the three of us finished our tea in silence. Kerrigan was the next to break the silence. “By any chance, you haven't disturbed anything in the bedroom since Karl's...” He trailed off. Smart man.

“No, I haven't. Not since they took him away. I can't stand to be in that room. I can't even go upstairs now...” Marissa's calm facade was slowly cracking, and the tears were getting ready to flow again... She reached for a nearby handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes.

“Would we, by chance, be able to go upstairs and have a little look around?” I asked. “If you don't mind, of course.”

“Yes, Veronica,” she said, her voice cracking slightly. “I don't know what you're hoping to find up there, but..." She fiddled with the hem of one of her sleeves. "You're more than welcome to take a look. It's the door on the left. It should be unlocked.”

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

Kerrigan and I thanked her, and we climbed the stairs to the second floor of Marissa and Karl's home. I pushed the door leading to their bedroom open, and we were greeted by... Well, to be honest, I don't know what I expected. It was most certainly a textbook definition of a bedroom. There was a queen-size bed with several blankets on it that looked as if they had just seen someone climb out of them. You had a small nightstand next to it, complete with a simple oil lamp, a bible, and a pair of reading glasses. Presumably Karl's. Marissa had her vanity along the opposite wall, with a box containing some jewelry that she might never get to wear anytime soon. Directly across from where we entered, there was a window that gave us a decent view of the sun setting over Falden. Off in the corner to my left stood a giant wardrobe. It held clothes, obviously. Nothing to see there.

“So,” I asked, “what do we look for?”

My associate shook his head. “I'm... not entirely sure. I suppose we just look, right?”

And so we looked. Actually, we more just gazed around the room for several seconds. Kerrigan took a leisurely stroll over to the wardrobe, flicked the handles a couple times, then opened it slightly and took a gander inside. I stepped over to the vanity and took a quick peek at how my bangs were doing after being subjected to the light autumn breeze that assaulted it on our way here from the doctor's house.

I turned towards the window to take in the afternoon light when I noticed something very, very curious on the windowsill. There was something trapped underneath the window proper, but I couldn't quite make out what.

I leaned in close, noting that it was a thin, green thing. It looked at first like a little scrap of paper, maybe a candy wrapper or something, but for some reason I couldn't shake the feeling in my stomach that this could potentially be something important. I gripped the window's handle and lifted it up, freeing the object from where it had been pinned down. I snatched it up and held it close, identifying it as some sort of leaf before stuffing it in my jacket pocket.

Kerrigan heard the scrape of me opening the window, and lazily turned his head over to see what I was up to. “Find something?”

I shut the window, lightly rattling the glass in the process. “Nah,” I lied, with a light shrug of my shoulders for further effect. “There was a ladybug on the windowsill. Just setting it free.”

The doctor grunted and went to have a look at the vanity himself. Meanwhile, I decided to move towards the bed. It was still a mess, having not been touched since Karl was writing in incredible pain while his flesh had been rotting away two nights ago. There was a heavy beige wool blanket that looked particularly scratchy and unpleasant to the touch that had a multicolored quilt resting on top of it. There were shades of purples, blues, and greens in various square and triangle-shaped patches; however, upon closer inspection, there were these faint, thin gray splotches littering the quilt in various parts.

I called my associate over. “Glove me,” I said.

“But you're wearing gloves.”

I shot him a glare, not very appreciative of his little wisecrack, be it intentional or not. “Rubber gloves, please. I don't want to ruin these.”

He winced from the harsh tone I had taken and reached into one of his coat pockets to fetch me a pair. “Did you find something else?”

I believe that I had, finally. What could possibly be our first big break in this whole matter. I carefully slid on the rubber gloves, careful not to mess up my leather ones. The doctor arched an inquisitive eyebrow as this; apparently, he considered it weird for someone to double-glove when working. He opened his mouth to say something, but I quickly shut him down with a simple remark about having a skin condition.

(Which, granted, is entirely true, depending on how you want to look at it.)

Slowly and gingerly, I wiped a gloved finger along the gray splotches on the quilt. Whatever it was, it was very light and very fuzzy, much like pocket lint. I brought it up close to my face, making a show to be very cautious in doing so (even though I knew full well that being a Briarheart has made me immune to whatever it was going around Falden). Kerrigan leaned in as close as he felt comfortable doing so, adjusting his glasses slightly to get a better look at the fuzzy stuff on my fingertip.

“What do you think it might be,” he asked.

“I don't know for certain. Fungal spores of some sort? Just by looking at it right here, that's the only guess I have.” I wiped the double-gloved finger off on a clean patch of the quilt. “Maybe we should take this thing back to your laboratory and find out for certain.

Kerrigan stepped back, his mouth agape in no small amount of surprise, his hands in the air in front of him. “Wait, you want to bring that infected thing into my house?”

I rolled my eyes and sighed heavily. “Okay, any laboratory. Better? Go ask Marissa for a burlap sack, or a piece of empty luggage, or something we can put this in where we can transport it without risking it touching either one of us. I think we might be on the verge of something here.”

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

It wasn't long before we left the widow's house and returned to Kerrigan's place to pick up a few things. From there, we ended up at a small building re-purposed as a sort of research facility that he shared with several other alchemists, researchers, and scientists. We unpacked the quilt, burned the bag we transported it in, and began preparing it for experimentation. My companion suggested that I go home and get some rest, and that he could take it from here for now. He promised to send word to The Bird and Barb when he verified one of the theories we had shot back and forth throughout the evening.

Before I left, however, I was able to sneak a quick swipe with a scrap of rag on the quilt, collecting a small sample of the unidentified gray fuzz. I crammed it into a wide glass vial, corked it up, shoved it into my coat pockets, and was on my way.

The sun had set and an evening chill hung thick in the air as I made the trek back to my room. At this late hour the streets were abandoned, save for a few stragglers late coming home from work. Each step on the stone-paved streets echoed lightly off the buildings of Falden. Occasionally, a lamp was kind enough to guide me along my way.

It wasn't long before I noticed that I was being followed. Years of paranoia and training will hone your ability to notice these things as well as mine. To the person's credit, they were being really good at it; their step was very light, and only slightly out of sync with my own. But there was a light rustling noise, perhaps from their clothes, that tipped me off to their presence.

I ducked down a side street towards gods-know-where, silently hoping that my pursuer would follow. They did.

Alright, good. Just lead them somewhere you can get the drop on them. Find out who they are, why they are tailing you...

Several minutes pass. A left, another left, and then a right; right into the shadowy depths of an alleyway. I pressed myself tightly against the wall, concealed entirely by darkness, waiting for whoever was following me to pass by. I stood in silence for ten, twenty, sixty seconds. Nobody walked by. Not a single telltale frosty breath was seen, not a single ruffle of pant legs on boots heard.

Very curious indeed. Perhaps they were just waiting for me to come out from behind the corner? Hoping to ambush me in the same manner

A very faint noise from the alleyway behind me.

...No. Impossible.

Something--someone--is behind me.

I quickly spun around, and saw the pale moonlight shine off of two dark, gnarled hands. A pair of gleeful, malicious yellowed eyes glinted, and there was a sharp grin full of rotted teeth. Before I could react, two puffs of a light gray smoke erupted from the palms of those hands. I stumbled back a couple steps, taken completely by surprise.

The creature cackled softly to itself, but his laughter quickly died down when he realized that whatever he threw at me was having no effect. A confused, raspy, horrid voice echoed in the alleyway. “Hehn? I don't understand... A concentrated burst like that should've...”

I sneezed, interrupting the creature. By the light of the moon overhead, I could see that my jacket had been absolutely covered in a light gray fuzz. “Funny,” I said as I looked up from the mess on my clothes, glaring daggers at him, “you've just answered every single question I've had since I arrived.” Wasting no time, I burst forth, sending a flurry of punches and kicks at my attacker. He was caught off guard; a few of them connected with his jaw and chest, but the majority of my onslaught was deftly blocked by green tendrils that had suddenly grown from his chest and neck. I was pushing him back towards the end of the alleyway, where he would have no means of escaping.

I continued pressing the attack, giving him no room to stage any counters. The assault was slowly wearing him down; his vines were slower to react, blocking less and less of my strikes. His skull, his throat again, his solar plexus... Each blow landed harder and harder. I had to subdue this creature, and do it before he could recover.

He suddenly found enough strength to try and strike back, catching me behind the knee with a swift kick. I nearly buckled under the incredible force of the kick, but still managed to rebound and hit him with a hook to his jaw. The creature recoiled, withdrawing all of his vines back into his shadow-cloaked body. I reached down for The Last Resort, tearing it from my holster and aiming it at my assailant just as he was whipping back around to face me. The creature's eyes suddenly grew wide at the piece I held in my hand, and I pulled the trigger.

Thunder cracked and echoed in the dark alleyway as a bullet erupted from the barrel, instantly blowing apart the right side of the creature's face. Bits of green flesh, skull, and a dark crimson syrup splattered along the stone walls nearby. He let out an unearthly howl as his briar-knit fingers clutched the dangling, oozing remnants of his face. I hesitated for just a split second, wondering how the hell someone could have half of their brains blown out but still be stumbling around.

I leveled the gun at his chest and started to squeeze the trigger once more when a storm of thick, gnarled vines burst from his bare chest and knocked me upside the skull. I flew through the air, my gun hitting the ground and spinning away as I came to a stop on the dirty stone paving of the alley. I scrambled to my knees, frantically searching for my piece when I heard the sudden growth of vines from the creature's body. I looked up to see him using them like extra appendages to grip windowsills and piping along the side of the building, pulling him up towards the rooftops with amazing speed.

And just like that, he was gone.

Slowly, I rose to my feet. My jaw was aching from where the briar fist had hit me. I collected my gun, holstered it, and stepped over to the bits of himself that he left behind after being shot. Nudging them with the toe of my boot. They had reverted to a clump of leafy vines, colored red by his spilled blood.

I picked up a few strands, put them in my coat pocket, spit on the rest, muttered a few curses, and was quickly on my way back to my rented room.

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

I surprised Kerrigan the next morning when I burst through the door of the research house, interrupting a series of tests he had been running on patches of the quilt. I had a different coat on, this one crafted of thick red wool, and had a huge sack and a pile of books in my arms.

I noted the dark circles around his eyes, and how he moved slightly slower than he did the previous day. “Didn't get any sleep last night? You look like hell.”

“No worse than you do, Veronica.” His eyes flickered at my lips briefly as I set the books down on a nearby table. My gloved hand reached up and touched the sore spot where I was struck during my alleyway scuffle. I hadn't noticed the bleeding until I returned to The Bird and Barb, where the kindly old woman always at the counter fussed over me and slathered a mixture of balms and shady home remedies on my mouth despite my protests.

“Trouble finds me no matter where I go, I suppose. But I'll get to that. I think I know what we're dealing with here, finally.” I reached into the sack I had dragged with me, producing my still spore-stained jacket from the night prior, setting it down on a table in the main experimentation area.

“As do I!” Kerrigan picked up a notebook that had laid open next to a particularly nasty-looking microscope, throwing his notes from the night of research next to my black jacket.

“A fungal infection,” we said simultaneously. Our eyes met for a brief, silent second, before he glanced over at my black coat. “Your...” He looked incredibly puzzled in that moment, his weathered brow knit heavily under salt and pepper bangs. “Your jacket is covered in gray spores...”

I nodded. “Yeah, about that...”

“What happened last night?”

“I was attacked in an alleyway by a very strange creature. The damn thing threw a few clouds of the shit at me, and the majority landed on my coat. Thankfully, I was able to block any of it from hitting my face, otherwise I probably wouldn't be here...” A little white lie, of course. I paused for a second, while Kerrigan began poking at the jacket with a rod. “Tell me... Have you ever heard of a creature called a Briarheart?”

The good doctor looked up at me, then back at the spore-laden coat as he pinched off a few extra samples (presumably to test for differences from the quilt). “I have, once or twice. My mother used to scare me and my sister with bedtime stories of monsters and such. But, I stopped believing in fairy tales and fables long ago.”

I was slightly offended by that last bit, even though I had only recently been inducted into the storybook monster club. “Briarhearts once were human,” I began. “The stories go that they were kidnapped as youth, and their hearts replaced with the essences of dryads and other nature elementals. These essences would slowly take over the host's body, granting them various mutations and powers. Control over animals, vine-knit limbs, the ability to regenerate body parts...”

Kerrigan adjusted his glasses and brought some samples from my coat over towards the microscope. “Yes, but I highly doubt that a bogeyman from a nearby forest is what is causing all of our problems here.”

I could feel my anger slowly coming to a boil. I took a deep breath to try and suppress it. “Some Briarhearts have the ability to natural produce various types of fungus spores, which give them the ability to spread all sorts of nasty things. Such as what's going on here.”

This last bit made my associate pause briefly to consider what I was saying, but I failed in swaying him. “So you're saying that you were attacked by this Briarheart last night?”

“Yes, I am.” I crossed my arms in front of me and leaned against a nearby doorway.

He shook his head. “No, I'm sure there's another explanation as to the spread of this plague. I haven't the slightest clue what; but I'm sure the answer is more plausible than your fairy tale creatures.”

My hands were squeezed into tight fists. I bit my lip in an attempt to not say anything stupid or lash out in anger at this man who was essentially denying my existence in front of me. I briefly considered grabbing the leaf from Karl's bedroom yesterday and the lengths of vine I pocketed after I shot half of my attacker's head off in the alleyway to show him, but he probably would've written it off as a common house plant.

I considered various other alternatives in the following seconds to try and convince him that I was onto something here; but each time, my subconscious shot me down, and it only made me angrier and angrier.

In hindsight, what I was about to do wasn't the best course of action, but it was the only one I was convinced would work. Kerrigan stood hunched over the microscope, twiddling knobs around in an effort to get a good look at the spores I brought with me. Walking towards him, I tore off the glove covering my right hand and threw it on the floor. I grabbed the doctor by the hair, wrenching him from the eyepiece of the microscope, and shoved my exposed briar-weave hand in front of him, palm up. The thin threads of my palm parted, revealing a trio of thin, shallow pods. A cloud of blue spores exploded from them, dancing in the air before us in pretty swirls.

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

Kerrigan screamed, twisting himself free from my grip and throwing himself to the floor in an attempt to get away from me. His fear was palpable. “What was that?! Who are you? What are you! What in the seven hells--!”

“Kerrigan, stop,” I shouted sternly at the doctor as he back himself into a corner, holding his hands up to his mouth as if he was trying to protect himself from breathing in the blue spores I threw out.

“No,” he cried out. “Not until you tell me what that was!”

“It's alright, I promise. That was just a different strain of cordyceps. Perfectly harmless to living creatures. You're fine, I swear on my life.”

This did little to calm him down, but at least it did something. His frantic eyes darted between the sinking cloud of blue spores settling on his equipment and my exposed right hand. “Wh-what the fuck!”

I leaned down and picked up my leather glove, sliding it back on my right hand and wiggling around my fingers to get the fit right once more. “The reason I was so confident I was confronted by a Briarheart last night is because I am one.”

“I-impossible,” the good doctor stammered, trying to get a grip on the situation. Clearly this revelation had clashed with everything he believed to hold true through science. I personally found it mind-boggling that in a world of magic and many fantastical beasts roaming the land, seas, and skies, that was he was having trouble believing something such as this.

With a sigh, I undid the buttons of my coat, rolling my shoulders a couple times to shrug it off. Underneath, as I always do nowadays, I had only my arctic leather bodice and pair of black slacks. Exposed were my briar-knit arms, in all their entangled, green, sun-drinking glory. I inched slower towards his quivering form, coming to a stop several inches away. I sat down on the floor across from him, trying my damnedest to put on a face that would make him relax. It wasn't working.

Wordlessly, I reached out with my gloved hands. I snatched Kerrigan's hands, holding him so he couldn't get away. “Listen to me,” I said soothingly as he struggled against my grip. “Stop fighting and listen to me. I am not going to hurt you, okay? I didn't come here to hurt anyone. I am here to help you. I am here to help everyone. Trust me, I know an awful lot more about diseases than my letters may let on.”

A half lie, and a half truth. Neither of them harmful, in my eyes.

The man took a few seconds to sort this strange discovery out in his mind. In the meantime, still holding onto his hands in an effort to calm him, I told him all about my encounter with the Briarheart in the alley, about the gray fungus that came from his hands, about how vines were sprouting all over his body in an attempt to fight back. About how I blew off half his face with a shot from The Last Resort, and about how it did absolutely nothing to stop him from escaping.

I could tell by the look in Kerrigan's baggy, hazel eyes that he was still confused and frightened, but that he had nevertheless calmed down. “This... This is pretty serious,” he finally managed to say.

“Yes,” I offered as a token agreement. “I don't have concrete evidence that he's the one responsible for everything in town, but I'm pretty damn sure of it. We have to find him—or I do, at the very least.”

I let go of Kerrigan's smooth hands and stood up. He pushed himself up to his knees and rose as well, dusting off the seat of his pants in the process. “What will you do if you catch him?”

Violently murder him and burn the remains before he can regenerate, naturally. “I don't know,” I replied with a shrug. “I haven't thought that far ahead.”

The doctor nodded, and we let a long silence grow between us. Finally, I spoke up again. “So, what were you able to find? It looks like you have yet to get any sleep.”

He walked over to the table, picking up the open notebook he had set down next to my black, spore-infested jacket. He thumbed through a couple of the pages, muttering things to himself until he found what he was looking for. “According to the experiments I've been able to run, it appears that the fungus can only reproduce when it has organic matter to feed it. I had a few scraps of fresh meat floating around from other failed tests... Waste not, as the saying goes.

“But, fortunately enough, I discovered that the fungus itself has a very negative reaction to various types of anti-fungal cream.” Kerrigan looked up from his notebook, blushed a bit, and gave a bit of a shrug. “One of my alchemist friends had some ingredients and tools lying around in another room, so I figured 'why not', right? You don't get results if you don't experiment.” His attention returned to the notebook. “Unfortunately, any skin that the fungus chews up is already dead by the time we're able to treat any new victims, and it looks like that the treatments don't immediately stop the spread of the spores, but they greatly inhibit them to the point where they will shortly run out of fresh flesh to consume and slowly die.”

Well, it's something. “How long until that happens?”

“It depends. I saw one sample die out within minutes, others are... still progressing; incredibly slowly, but still progressing.”

I nodded. This was indeed a breakthrough. Don't get me wrong; I'm incredibly happy that Kerrigan was able to come up with something while I was out tangling with another Briarheart. “What about the limbs already infected?”

The doctor pursed his lips and shook his head, telling me everything I needed to know.

I opened my mouth to say something else when a bloodcurdling scream rang out from the streets outside. Kerrigan's face went white, and a chill like none other ripped down my spine. Before he could say anything, I turned on my heels and was out the door in a flash. Outside, a small group of people were giving a wide berth to a woman clutching at her face and covered in gray fuzz as she twitched on the stone-paved road, her continued cries echoing in the streets. Down the way, I saw a cloaked figure turn down a side road or an alley or something.

I made as if I was about to give chase, but I immediately thought about the poor unfortunate soul at my feet. If she was holding her face, time was of the utmost importance. I quickly scooped her up, careful not to disturb her head too much, and rushed back inside.

“Kerrigan! Gloves! Now!”

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

Kerrigan wasted no time slipping a surgical mask and a pair of gloves on and clearing off another table in a different room. He snatched up a small pillow and set it underneath the woman's head as I set her down. Her screams were deafening, echoing off the plain walls of the research house. I could see that the skin on the back of her left hand had started to turn gray and crack, exposing the muscles and bone underneath.. We were running out of time. We had to act fast.

The doctor ran off to the other room to collect as much of the anti-fungal cream as he made last night to experiment with. My heart raced as this poor soul writhed in unspeakable agony, the fungus making quick work of the tender, pale flesh on her face.

I grabbed her wrists and tried to force her arms down. “Listen to me,” I hissed. “I can't imagine what you're going through right now, but I need you to stop screaming and stop moving around. We're going to save you, but I need you to be absolutely still.”

By now, the infection had spread all over the left side of her face. It engulfed her cheek and neck, started curving around her thin, quivering lips and climbing up her chin, and cut a path up her temple and started on her forehead. I locked eyes with her, the desperation and pain perfectly visible in her green-tinted orbs. “Please, you have to stay absolutely still. Don't scream, don't twitch, don't shake, don't cry, don't anything. Can you promise me this?”

She whimpered slightly, her cries caught in her throat, and tried to nod before cracking under the pain. I could see the fungus eat her inch by inch as the seconds past. My heart beat faster and faster. She was going to be as good as dead in minutes if we didn't do anything.

Kerrigan came back running, several vials of a liquid that looked like white paint in hand. He tossed one in my direction, and I caught it in mid-air. “I'll handle the face, you get her hand,” he said as he ripped the rubber stoppers out of his vials.

I bit down on the finger of my glove, sliding my briar-knit hand out and dabbed a finger into the medicine. “Only the outside edges, like a barrier?”

“Yes,” the good doctor nodded, the wrinkles of his forehead damp with sweat born of stress and fatigue. I gingerly picked up the girl's slowly rotting hand in my gloved one, and dabbed the outer edges of the circle of gray decay with a healthy spot of cream. She immediately buckled on the table, her body twisting in ways that I thought were normally impossible. A long, painful scream tore through the makeshift emergency room, and the woman whipped her head in a fashion that sent the pillow flying to the floor in a puffy heap.

Three vines erupted from the sleeves of my red coat, wrapping themselves around the woman's body and underneath the table in an effort to keep her still. For the most part, it worked. One across the chest, one around the waist, and the last around her thighs. The green tendrils were thin, but deceptively strong. But, despite the restraints, she was still shaking in untold amounts of pain as the disease continued to eat away at her flesh.

Kerrigan nodded towards her head. “Tie her down there, too.” My fourth vine crept out and strapped itself around her forehead, avoiding touching the infected area of her exposed face as it held her still.

The two of us got to work; me on the poor soul's hand, Kerrigan on her face and neck, applying ample amounts of his anti-fungal cream to the outside edges of where that son of a bitch Briarheart had hit her with a cloud of gray spores. As I worked on it, my mind slowly wandered to my reign of terror in Eiskalt. All those people I myself infected. Was this what it was like for their friends and family? To scramble in an attempt to save their lives as their loved ones slowly rotted away to nothingness before their eyes?

For the briefest moment, as my briar-knit finger rounded the inside of the palm of the infected woman's left hand down by the wrist, I felt a tiny pang of regret.

I didn't know this woman. I had no business saving her. Hell, had I known that this was how my trip to Falden would've turned out, I would've simply stopped my correspondence with Kerrigan and moved on with my life.

I could've turned my sights elsewhere, like Raiaera for instance, to find other diseases and plagues to collect.

I had all that I needed last night. The sample I collected from that dead guy's quilt, and the blast of spores that the other asshole hit me with in the alleyway... I had what I came here for. I could've left town without a second thought and let this mess sort itself out. I could've been on my way back to the Crimson Hand, with a fresh new toy for us to work wonders with.

But... why did I stay? Was... was it this other Briarheart? Did I subconsciously want to help Kerrigan see his research through?

I let this maelstrom of thoughts spin around inside my head as the minutes passed. The woman's screams had died down, turning into pained sobs and whimpers. Less and less she fought against my vines wrapped around her body and the table. Kerrigan had finished up work on her face and neck. The poor doctor looked as if he had aged ten years in the three minutes it took for us to finish up.

Wordlessly, he rummaged through a cabinet until he found a sedative. He rolled up the sleeve on her right arm and injected the contents of the needle into her blood. “This should calm her down and allow her to get some rest,” he said, his voice heavy and tired.

It wasn't long before the woman was out like a candle. I withdrew my vines back into my body, and walked over to the sink to wash my hands clean of the cream. The water ran cold over my tangled green fingers as I scrubbed them hard. My face was blank and devoid of emotion as I watched the soapy bubbles mix with the water as it circled down the drain.

I turned to look at the woman as I dried my hands on a towel. Her breathing was ragged, but she was at the very least still drawing it. I suppose, all things considered, that's what you can be thankful for the most.

Kerrigan had picked the pillow off the floor and carefully placed it back underneath the infected wretch's head before leaving the room. I shortly followed after him, and we threw ourselves down on a couple of worn leather chairs in the research house's main room.

We sat in silence for several minutes, both of us trying to calm down after the sudden emergency. My heart was still running a million miles a minute. I closed my eyes and practiced a few deep breathing exercise I once read about when I owned the bookstore in Radasanth.

It was several more minutes until the doctor spoke. “So. Vines too, huh?”

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

I stayed with Kerrigan for the rest of the afternoon, helping him tend to the woman who was injured in the streets outside the little research commune he and his alchemist and -ologist friends shared. I was thankful that the good doctor was tactful enough not to mention anything related to Briarhearts--their physiology, their creation, the awful things they are capable of naturally producing or any other questions that would make things suitably awkward. We kept our focus on our patient, laid up on the table, her breathing shallow but steady.

We discussed the woman's fate and quickly came to the realization that even though she was certain to survive, she would likely be disfigured for life. She had a hard road ahead of her, having essentially lost half of her face and left hand. The hand could be amputated; but the face... I nearly brought up the fact that I know someone who is a fleshcrafter that could fix her up. Then, I remember that person is Aurelianus Drak'shal; and with the tiefling, sometimes the cure the worse than the disease.

Alright, not sometimes. Most times.

The good doctor elected to stay behind and watch the patient, while I went back to my room at The Bird and Barb. Bless his heart for his dedication to his craft. If I were in a situation where half of my flesh had been eaten, I could only wish that the fates saw fit to have someone with half of his compassion and dedication watch over me.

The walk was a lonely, quiet one. The sun was setting overhead, casting the streets of Falden in an eerie orange glow, as if the entire city were on fire. I pulled my coat tighter around my body and picked up the pace, hoping to get back to the tavern as soon as possible.

Somewhere, that bastard Briarheart was still out there. Watching. Waiting. Plotting.

I just knew it. All of us rotten, evil-types are alike in more ways than we're willing to admit.

What I hadn't thought of was that he was keeping an eye on my movements around town since our first meeting last night. It never occurred to me that his daytime attack was deliberate, as if it were a declaration of some sort; which is why I found myself in more than a little bit of shock to return to my room and find that my Archivist's Notebook was opened on my bed, a bone pen nestled in the crook of the binding, with a page ripped from it and folded up on my pillow.

I hesitated for a second before picking it up with a briar-knit hand. I unfolded the page to find a very, very crude sort of handwriting. A small, green leaf tumbled out onto the pillow, serving as the author's signature, leaving me no doubt who had left it.

well, arn't you something different

your briar-knit, i can smell it on you

but you don't do the masters work

why, sister?

meet me on the rooftops at moon's peak

i'll be waiting for you

Hold on a second. “Sister”? The master? What the fuck is he on about?

Oh, you bastard, I'll meet you on the rooftops, alright.

And, hours later, I was on the roof of The Bird and Barb. The curved sliver of the moon shone brightly overhead in the cloudless sky, surrounded by countless speckles of white light. The Bird and Barb was three storeys tall, standing taller than most of the other buildings on this thoroughfare. I sat on the wooden chair I had dragged up from my room, swirling around a bitter amber liquid in a glass tumbler as I waited.

Minutes turned into an hour as the moon crept inches by inches in the air overhead. Behind me, there was the light rustle of leaves as someone landed on the flat wooden roof of the inn. I stood up, drink in hand, and turned to face my visitor.

This time, he was without his cloak and dressed in only a pair of tattered black slacks. The entirety of his upper body was a pale shade of green, save for his vineweft arms and the half of his face, which was still a natty tangle of thin vines. His one good eye glinted in the light of the moon as he smiled. The creature's movements were slow and deliberate. “Hello, sister. I've been wishing to speak to you.”

“Let me get something straight right now,” I spat at the Briarheart. “I'm not your fucking sister, alright?”

He cocked his head, clearly confused. “You're mistaken. We are all brothers and sisters. All of us with the gift. We are one family under the care of the master. We all have a sacred duty to uphold.” His head twisted the other way, as a dog's would when he doesn't understand a command. “But, you are clearly different. You do not spread his gifts... No; instead, you cleanse those who have received his love!” My mind flickered briefly to the half-decayed face of the woman whose life I helped saved earlier.

“But that is not our purpose,” he continued, his voice suddenly quiet and raspy. “No; all of us, brothers and sisters under his guidance and care, we exist only to spread the gifts of the master. His will must be known, his deeds must be done. Throughout the world, throughout all peoples, all lands...” He hissed lightly, continuing to slowly approach me.

I narrowed a venomous glare at him. “I don't know who you're talking about with this 'master' shit.”

“Ahh, that is because you are still new. You have yet to complete your changing into a full Briarheart.” The monster grinned. Great, I have to deal with more of this transformation shit? Weren't my two arms enough? I mean, seriously!

He held out a gnarled, vine-woven hand, summoning me to take it. “Sister, we have heard of your deeds in Eiskalt.” My blood turned to ice. Suddenly, this creature's talk of family and masters was sounding a little more plausible. “The master thinks that you hold incredible promise. The master knows of what you have been doing here in town, and even forgives you for it.”

I cut off this asshole right there. “You and your stupid master know nothing about my intentions here,” I spat at him.

The Briarheart simply smiled. “You are here to undo the work of--”

“Shut the fuck up with this 'master' bullshit,” I snapped. The creature froze in his tracks, given pause by the icy tone of my voice. “I serve only myself.”

His one good eye turned dark. “And yet, you answered the doctor's summons and helped him destroy our gift...”

Ice cubed clinked softly I swirled the amber liquid around in my glass some more. “An ally of convenience, I can assure you. My one reason in town was to collect samples of this plague that you've been spreading. The person who considers himself my true master would be most interested in its effects.”

The Briarheart stretched out his arms and smiled. “And you have most certainly collected your sample, sister. You have the gift flowing through your very veins right now, waiting to be unleashed upon the world.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Wait, what?” Now it was my turn to be confused.

“We Briarhearts have the gift to absorb diseases, plagues, fungus, and the rest of the master's gifts to the world. We assimilate them into our bodies; we become them, and they become us. This very minute, you have my gift to you coursing through your body, ever growing, ever festering. At any time, with my gift to you, you are able to unleash it on the world yourself.”

Well, this was most certainly interesting. If he could be believed, then I have sort of turned into a walking plague sponge. Or would it be a plague bucket? This was the line in the book I was referring to; I had read that Briarhearts are able to assimilate other diseases into their very beings, able to recall them at will and use them to spread infection and misery elsewhere. That would explain how I was able to continue spreading the plague I brought with me into Eiskalt without any additional samples.

With a dismissive smile, I said, “If that's the case, then my business in Falden is done.”

I took a step towards the staircase that had led up to the roof of the inn from the third floor. The Briarheart swiftly moved to cut me off, his face less than a foot from my own. “I'm afraid that I cannot let you leave, sister. The master has tasked me with finishing your initiation and bringing you into the fold. You have started to wander from the path of the Briarheart. We cannot allow you to stray further.”

His breath smelled faintly of flowers and rot. I gazed into his one good eye, and the indentation in the vines where the other was before it was blown off with the rest of his face in the alley last night. I said not a word as I brought up my drink, taking a long sip that lasted seconds. I drained most of the glass and tossed it aside, leaving it to roll along the wooden planks of the rooftop.

“By your own free will or by force,” he growled, “you will come with me tonight.”

I spit a mouthful of my drink in his face. The burning of his plant flesh began in an instant. A horrid, piercing scream ripped through the chilly, moonlit night as his skin bubbled and slowly melted away. Nearby, small droplets of my acid poured out of the glass tumbler, burning bits of wooden planks as the glass slowly rolled along.

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

Foul smoke seeped between the Briarheart's fingers as he clutched and scraped at his face, trying hard to wipe the acid off him as it continued to eat his green flesh. All it did was spread it to his hands, which similarly started to bubble up.

“You vile creature,” he screamed, oblivious to the irony of it. His body whipped around, sprouting vines everywhere and lashing out in every direction, hoping that he was going to hit me. I took several steps back, getting out of reach of the flurry of green tendrils as they whipped through the night. The Briarheart stumbled around on the rooftop in a mad attempt to find me, his pained cries somewhere between desperate and furious.

“We are family, sister! I gave you the chance to join us willingly!” He moved his hands away from his eyes. Pale moonlight glinted off the gooey remnants of his eyeball, half-melted by my acid.

I reached for The Last Resort, nestled tightly in its leather holster at my side. “Oh, give it up with this sister bullshit already!”

The monster's head whipped around, his snarl turning into a malicious grin. I cursed softly to myself. Apparently advanced hearing was another perk that I had yet to develop. He bolted in my direction across the rooftop, his footsteps like thunderclaps, faster than I had ever seen anyone move in my life.

“Shit--!” I shifted my weight as if I were going to dive off to one side, but I had been too slow. The bastard tackled me, putting his shoulder into my stomach. I gasped loudly as the impact against the wooden planks of the roof knocked the wind out of me. The Briarheart latched his vine-knit hands onto the side of my face, squeezing hard.

“I was content to spread the master's gifts in this town, as was expected of me.” I cracked open my eyes to see the horrific sight of his rapidly-melting face smiling down on me, his monstrous grin smiling over me. A blob of decaying green goop fell from his sharp chin, exposing a bit of skull bone and splashing against my neck. “But then you showed up, sister. You showed up and defied our master's wishes. You helped that wretched alchemist. You destroyed my gift to these people. That is unforgivable.”

The fucker squeezed the sides of my head even harder. My lips were twisted in a snarl, and I tried not to cry out in pain. “It is most unfortunate that you don't want to take your place among your new family, Briarheart. You abandoned your quest in Eiskalt, you chose to ignore your true calling, dear sister... The master will be disappointed to hear that your flower has wilted before it was allow to fully bloom; but he will understand.”

I had to do something before this crazy bastard caved in my skull. I reached up blindly, grabbing his jaw and the back of his head. I jammed my right thumb into his one good eye socket. He predictably howled in pain and let go of my head, latching onto my wrists instead and tried his damnedest to rip himself free. A flurry of vines erupted from my wrists, wrapping tightly around his head and my hands so it would've been impossible for him to loosen my grip.

I screamed into the night; a more violent, blood-curdling cry than has ever escaped my throat than before, and twisted his head around. The snapping of bone was unmistakable and beautiful. The creature immediately let go of my wrists, and his briar-knit arms fell to his sides. I released his head from my grip and tossed him to the side. His unmoving body bounced once before coming to a rest on his back.

The midnight moon hung overhead as I regained my breath. My head was pounding from being squeezed like fresh fruit. Lazily, I brought my hands up to my chest and wiped the slimy remains of his face off on my coat. “What a night,” I muttered to myself as I rolled over to my side.

Slowly, I was able to push myself up to my knees. I sat there for several seconds, trying to slow my breathing, when the bastard moved. My blood turned to ice. I looked over at him in complete shock, my jaw hanging down like it was door off its hinges or something. That fucker was stirring. Or, at least, he was having spasms.

“S-sissssssterrrrr...” His jaw rattled as he lay there, his head turned in a manner that should not have been physically possible. “You... you you youyouyou wiiiiii--”

I didn't give him the time to finish. I was on my feet, The Last Resort in hand. “Stay down!” I screamed as I pulled the trigger. Fire erupted from the iron barrel, and a part of the monster's forehead instantly caved in and started oozing blood.

“Stay the fuck down!” Another shot his his chest, somewhere close to his right lung.

“You monster!” Another shot. Half of his neck exploded in a shower of flesh and ichor, staining the rooftop dark.

“Fuck you! Fuck the whole lot of you!” Another shot, just above his heart.

I continued to scream at his violently twitching form, pumping more and more bullets into his vitals until the chambers emptied and all that thundered were the clicks of my revolver's flintlock. I stood there, shaking, breathing heavily, watching, waiting for this bastard Briarheart to stop moving once and for all. It didn't take long; but it felt like forever.

I had to finish this now, before he could fully regenerate again.

Sliding the still-smoking Last Resort back into its hip holster, I walked over to the chair I had brought up from my room in the inn, and grabbed a pile of wrappings and chains that had been sitting next to it this entire time.

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

“...It is dark.”

“I know.”

“Sister... Is that you? It is dark. I cannot see.”

“I shot one of your eyes out and melted the other, asshole. Of course you can't fucking see.”

The Briarheart shifted around a bit, but found his movement stifled by the burlap wrappings covering his entire body and the chains keeping him restrained on the table. He grunted as he struggled, trying to free himself, trying to poke holes in the burlap with vines, but nothing would grant him freedom.

“I cannot move... Why can I not move?”

“You won't have the need to for much longer.”

We were in an abandoned home several blocks into a bad part of Falden that I had scoped out before heading to the rooftop of The Bird and Barb. That's all you need to know. I held two gallons jugs of lamp oil in my hands, setting one down on the floor next to me as I stood over the table. I set one down on the steel top of the table, the lacquered ceramic thudding softly as the flammable liquid sloshed around inside.

Thick strands of burlap rose and fell as the creature spoke. His voice held pangs of resignation in them. “Tell me... Why are you doing this? To your brother? To one of your own kind?”

My voice was flat and emotionless as I began pouring the oil all over him. The vapors were overpowering, and I tried not to choke on them as I spoke. “When I learned about what was happening here in Falden, I took interest in the disease that was making its way through town. My true master, no matter what you say to me about family or that shit, has tasked me with the research of various diseases and their cures in hopes of turning them into weapons he can use for his own narrow-minded purposes.”

The oil had begun seeping through the wrappings, soaking the creature's plant skin with the ignitable fluid. He began to struggle harder against the chains, which still offered no yield. “I struck up a working relationship with the good doctor Kerrigan in an attempt to learn more about this curious affliction that ate away at the victim's flesh, leaving behind dead cells that looked as if a tree or bush had been on fire.” The first jug of lamp oil had emptied. I set it down at my feet and picked up the second, setting about absolutely saturating this fucker with the stuff until he choked.

The thick, nauseating fumes hung in the air like a bad omen. “Along the way, Kerrigan had me confused as a healer who would be able to help him out. I obliged him, arriving in town with the true intent of collecting a sample and getting out before he could notice my departure. But, that's when you came into the picture.”

“It has been my gift to Falden's denizens,” the Briarheart said, nodding under the sheets. “It has been my purpose to spread my gift from the master throughout the world.”

“And see, that's the problem.” The second jug had glug-glugged the last of its oil onto the table, spilling over in rivulets off the side and splashing onto the abandoned house's stone floor below. I dug into my pocket for a matchbook and continued speaking. “You're killing random, innocent people.”

“Everyone dies,” he snapped back.

My voice flared with anger. “There are people who deserve to die, and there are innocent people who deserve to continue with their lives. There is a difference between the two; a difference that you appear to be unaware of. This is why we are different, don't you see? This is why you don't deserve to live anymore. You're a monster. A murderer."

“We know about you, about your past,” the Briarheart taunted. “We know who you were before you became one of us. You have no right to pass judgment, assassin.”

“Fuck you,” I spat. I tore a match out of the book and held it against the rough strip, ready to rip it across.

“It is our purpose to spread the gifts throughout the world, never discriminating against those who you say deserve and don't deserve them. Does the plague care about your past deeds? Does the flu consider the crimes of its potential hosts? No; they see all life forms as equally deserving. We are to follow their example. That is our way. That is our purpose.”

A chill slowly crept down my spine. “You kill for the sake of killing. You don't deserve to live. This is why I have to do this. I'm not like you; I'm not like your master. I'm not like any of you assholes. I am no fucking monster, do you understand me?”

The Briarheart contemplated for a second, then turned his head in my direction underneath the burlap wrappings he was bound in. “What about the citizens of Eiskalt, then? What was the crime they committed to deserve your actions against them?”

I lit the match and dropped it onto the oil-soaked body of the creature. I stepped back as an intense inferno suddenly rose in front of me, casting the entire room in a deadly orange glow as the flames danced around and consumed his body. Shrill, high-pitched screams came from the monster as he writhed in agony on the steel table, his body slowly burning away and turning into ash as I stood there.

Silent.

Watching.

Empty.

[Quentin Boone]

Thread Title: Ashling's Gift (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?28252-Ashling-s-Gift)
Judgment Type: Condensed Rubric
Participants: BlackAndBlueEyes



Plot: 19/30
The story in this thread was a good one - it had a good structure with enough intrigue and action to really draw the reader into its events. It was for the most part unpredictable, although Madison's reveal was pretty obvious, which was a shame.

The thread moved at a steady pace that felt appropriate, and the action scenes were given a quicker pace to show their speed and urgency when appropriate.

Setting was well placed, and while the thread gave a decent impression of the environment, it didn't immerse the reader in the rich world. Consistent use of all five senses will really help here.

There were also a few inconsistencies in the thread. Most notably in the fact that Falden was described early in the thread as a small village, but was later referred to as a city. When Madison and Kerrigan went to see Marissa, only a little time seemed to pass from Madison waking up and going upstairs to the bedroom, but the sun was already setting.



Character: 22/30
Character was well-portrayed throughout the thread. As always, the first-person perspective gave great insights into Madison's psyche. Not only this, NPCs were brought to life and their voices really shone through to the reader.

The dialogue did a great job of showing personality throughout, and little actions were described well, which really helped to portray emotions and moods. Of special note is how Madison was shown to actually possess compassion when comforting and reassuring Marissa. And it was a pleasant change to see a softer side to the Briarheart!

The antagonst, however, fell short of the standard set in the rest of the thread. He lacked the depth that the rest of the characters had, and his dedication to 'The Master' felt a little forced and could have done with a little more reasoning. Though it's understood that this was a tool for hinting at future threads, it stuck out due to the quality of the other characters throughout.



Prose: 16.5/30
Mechanics were a struggle throughout the thread. Although spelling and basic grammatical errors were sparse, most of them would have been caught with a quick proof read.

Previous judgements have mentioned the effectiveness of the journal-like style adopted by BlackAndBlueEyes, and this thread seemed like it aimed to really take it to the next level. This technique gave a really good tone to the thread, but resulted in a common switch between tenses and perspectives, which were jarring and occasionally hurt the otherwise really good clarity of the thread.

Clarity was also hurt by the above-mentioned shortfalls in describing the setting. By improving the setting, an even higher score could be achieved here through use of imagery to add literary flair to the writing.



Wildcard: 8/10
I really enjoyed this thread, yet again. I like that you tried to further enhance the journal-entry style of your posts, and it definitely paid off in terms of tone. I'm looking forward to finding out more about these Briarhearts and who The Master is. Once again, a job well done.



Final Score: 65.5/100

BlackAndBlueEyes (http://www.althanas.com/world/member.php?3431-BlackAndBlueEyes) receives:


2524 EXP!
208 GP!


Congratulations!

[Lye]

EXP & GP Added!