Fairwell, Fair Doctor

[Valannor 6405]

 

“If it is all the same to you, good Father, I would prefer I live. I wish to be a Doctor, you see, and I am still young yet… I have an entire life ahead of me.” - Adam Shelley, moments before he was “slain.”

‘Twas a fair night when the Clergymen made to slaughter the likeness of a young man, yet to experience the fruit of life and the taste of eden. Of course, such was a ploy, cleverly concocted so that they might ‘free’ the good Doctor of what they presumed to be a foul demon of the most esoteric sort, the man merely having been knocked unconscious during the scuffle. Alas, such a ploy had not been revealed to the Imperial State Army and its soldiers, and so it came to pass that the boy and the priests were hauled off to the Bastion, and to the crypts and cells respectively.

 

Amidst the unfolding riots and scuffles, it was ordered that one particular soldier cart the ‘corpse’ of the boy off to the morgue, and in this, he obeyed most dutifully. Indeed, was that clammy and cold form of the ghoulish doctor hauled into the upper layers of the catacombs, and laid to its prospective rest… Only, the man had yet lived. Indeed, his poor health had given but the illusion of his demise, and his pulse yet coursed throughout damaged veins… though, such was weak, and an indication that he had not long left in this plane. However, fate had crueler plans in store.

 

For as that soldier departed, a shadow took shape amongst the sea of kine, and the din and ken of the mortal realms. In his unconscious state, he had not the time to scream or plead for his life, nor the inclination, indeed. Wolven jaws rent flesh asunder that night, and wrathful ichor was soaked in precious lifeblood as that loathsome, terrible spirit indulged in its animalistic instincts once again. And once again, it chose to walk in mortal form, puppeteering the corpse in most crude and gruesome manner, making a swift escape from captivity, unbeknownst to the common soldiery. 

 

That night, within the confines of the Providence Clinic, a corpse would shamble its way into the operating room, and lay itself down on the bed. Those who came to investigate the area would find it beheaded, with numerous bite marks and chunks of flesh torn from the body. The head would be placed on the corpse’s stomach, the ears flayed off, its eyes plucked out and placed in a nearby jar, and its mouth would have been stitched shut with surgical thread. Within an outstretched hand would lay a carven stone coin, wrought of pale blue stone, and inlaid with the face of a snarling, rabid wolf. And on both faces of this coin, a sentence in the Haeseni tongue of New Marian would have been inscribed.

 

“Va Krusae Zwy Kongzem, Joedensk Ve Enkely.”

[Mescaffier 6197]

A figure stumbled its way through the dank twists and turns of the tunnels beneath the bastion, cold puffs of air trailing from their maws as footsteps split the silence of the catacombs, rumbling across the sodden ground like thunder reverberating along a blackened sky. And like rain and hail, did that woman fall, with a tremendous thud as she tried to reach into the air.

 

"Viktoriya, Viktoriya, come back!"

 

 And yet, she chose not to heed that herald's words. The door to the crypt swung open with such a force that the old wood had splintered and broken, leaving the Captain scrambling through shards of oak like a babe learning to walk. In a breathless voice, did her desperation ring out through the bleak hall. The beginnings of a choked sob; out of guilt, or of grief, she wailed,

 

"It's gone."

 

She muttered to herself that phrase again, checking the empty coffin thrice before hurriedly clambering onto her feet. Blood trickled from her hands, wood impaling the palms and knees of that old, bedraggled mutt of a descendant. 

 

"Where. Where has it gone? The Metropolitan had claimed he hadn't killed the boy! Where -"  Viktoriya began to scream, clutching both ends of her head with her splintered hands, only cut short by the Fifth Brigadier beside her.

 

"The . . . Madame, we've a report  at the hospital, of a . . ."

 

And before that soldier could finish, she'd already begun racing away on her desperate hunt. 

 

"I shan't be blamed for this, it wasn't I! I didn't know he was alive, I didn't know! You wretch, you fiend . . . You cursed man, you fool of a Bishop. You sought to trick that ghost into its death, and now look what it's brought upon us."

 

Viktoriya grimaced as she pried open the doors to the operating room, her gaunt hands clutched tight to the iron door. There, sat the eaten corpse; brutalized and mutilated, his eyes glazed and his mouth sewn shut to enforce his silence. And there she wept,

 

"You monster of a Bishop, of a holy man. You taunted this spirit, and this spirit gave its response in blood; of which you first shed."

[bugbytes21 790]

Father Hernando would slam his fist on his desk at the confirmation of the death, "It appears our attempts at saving his life did not bear fruit may his soul find eternal peace in the seven skies" Hernando would then go back to praying in the garden and planning Francisco's funeral.