Silvia Peirot's Lore

Blood Solstice

Silvia Peirot's Story

Originally posted in July 2023

- Chapter I -

A dark night echoes between trees in a seemingly lonely forest. It's late enough for all the creatures of the night to already be hiding away. The forest blends into the darkness and is full of old trees that creak and sway from the slightest breeze. These ancient trees have seen hundreds of travelers ignorant enough to stumble this far into the woods, and nearly all of them stay here. Venturing deeper, the trees begin to grow thinner and more sparse as rocks begin to emerge near their roots and eventually tower over them. An old quarry rests in the side of a hill, like an old wound trying to heal itself, while a silver mist hangs between the rocks and bushes scattered along the sides of the quarry. The quarry itself has been abandoned for years since the accident rate surpassed the local town population. Some of the people who neighbored the quarry and surrounding woods were smart enough to stay away from the place, but not smart enough to keep silent about it, saying the quarry was cursed down to the core and that the rocks themselves were alive. The quarry grounds, now devoid of their initial and man-made purposes, are slowly consuming the other structures that were abandoned there, razing them to an equal playing field. The wood from the houses rots under the weight of the persistent humidity and mold thickens on the joints between the buildings. Metal twists and creaks as it decays into rust. Nature wages war on the quarry grounds in the form of vines and moss. A thrum vibrates through the air as figures start to emerge from behind large vertical stones. Cloaked figures in the mist move slowly between the stones of the quarry while holding single red-flamed candles. They utter low tones from their barely parting lips. Their tongues undulate within their mouths to create other-worldly sounds. The humanoid creatures are draped in dirty sackcloth and rope belts, all of these clothes seem to be made of rough fabric stretched and stitched together from discarded materials. Their mutterings and wailing seem to focus and hang around the rocks themselves. Smaller stones dance and chitter under the feet of the figures as they move. Water trickles down from between the sparse roots stuck in the side of the hill above, hitting the unsuspecting rocks and coating the violated site with pure water. The larger rocks pulse and vibrate with the air around them, pushing the moisture away from their surfaces.

The movement of the cloaked figures around the rocks draws the attention of something from the thinly wooded area directly outside of the quarry. The curtain of silver mist pushes out from the quarry and settles just above the ground at the edge of the forest, then starts falling back into the mouth of the quarry like water circling a drain. A large creature is standing between two trees looking upon the quarry and studying the ritual that is taking place. Carrying a large sword on their back and a small pack dangling from their hand, the creature stands tall next to the trunks of the trees and is moving even less than they are. The wind blows slightly and consistently, although the mist stays clinging to the ground. The creature stands on the outer edge of the quarry, simply watching. Learning. Waiting. Silvia straps the small pack to her waist and slowly begins to walk toward the shifting action in the quarry. As she emerges from the receding woods, the vibrations from the quarry begin to grow louder in her ears as she clenches her jaw.

Silvia takes the cold, moist air into her lungs, closes her eyes, and thinks back to her interaction with the apothecary seer.

A young man in clean white robes stands behind a chest-high wooden counter. His stupid face is babbling on and on about some ancient evil that has plagued the land for an eternity of time or something else. Silvia remembers staring and patiently waiting. Seers are always babbling about things, and she's always been patient. She has come to the apothecary to learn more information about a potential monster. Eventually, the seer stops talking to breathe. Silvia takes out a crumpled map, drops it on the counter, and tosses a thick stick of hardened charcoal on top. A brief moment hangs in the air as the seer looks confused. Silvia presses her meaty finger against a woodland part of the map.

The seer looks at her, "You actually want to go there?".

Silvia dips her head in a single nod.

He picks up the charcoal stick and twiddles it in his hands thinking for a moment, "Miss, I highly recc–" his voice cuts off as Silvia's hand presses into the wooden countertop, and the wood creaks under her pressure. The apothecary seer quickly marks an 'X' on the map just outside of a woodland patch and quickly draws where the land gives way into a large hole. She picks up the map and leaves the seer standing alone in his apothecary holding a dirty piece of charcoal as a trophy of this odd interaction.

Silvia opens her eyes and pushes the air out from her lungs. She walks towards a large rock and leans her weight against it, feeling the cold of the rock enveloping the skin of her arm and shoulder. She reaches behind her head to grab her sword hilt, feels the leather grips that wrap her sword in her hand and squeezes it tighter, the leather rubs together and makes a satisfying sound behind her head. A long breath in, and a quick, short breath out from her nose. She steps away from the rock and walks a few steps deeper into the quarry, finds a ledge that drops down about ten feet, and jumps into the pit. A thud sound echoes into the quarry as Silvia’s boot crunches rock and dirt from the impact. A noticeable silence weighs down the air as Silvia scans the lower ledge of the quarry. She doesn't see anything moving and an odd feeling of worry hits her guts as she thinks a mistake was made. She then notices a flicker of flame and movement between two large rocks, a sigh of relief and a shot of adrenaline course through her blood. A cultist stops sharply between the rocks as if stopped by an unnatural force. The air surrounding them blows their flowing robes in all directions. Their limbs are rigid and stiff, but their torso and head whiplash to the reaction of their mechanical limbs. They turn to face the intruder standing on the outskirts of their ritual. Their eyes meet each other but neither make a move for a single long breath. The cultist’s muscles twitch with otherworldly power as their limbs begin to move and search their body for something. Silvia echoes the cultist; she reaches back behind her shoulder, an action that her muscles know from years of experience, and slowly draws her sword from its sheath.

Rain begins to fall.

- Chapter II -

The rain pierces the mist covering the ground of the quarry, causing the top to become turbulent when the lances of rain pierce it. The mist now coming up to Silvia's calves looks more like an ocean during a sea storm.

Silvia focuses her mind and can hear the pattering of rain on her sword. The different sounds of the water hitting the metal blade and the leather wraps. She shifts her weight, steadies herself with her free hand, and enjoys the tink-tinking sounds that her sword communicates to her as she waits for the cultist to make their first mistake.

The cultist doesn’t disappoint as their hand dives into their sleeve and they pull a ceremonial dagger from inside their large canvas-sleeved robe and charge at Silvia all in a single unhinged movement. The cultist makes erratic actions that are hard to track, like a drunk looking for a fistfight in a muddy back alley. Silvia steps back a single sweeping step, lowers her hips, and widens her stance as she brings the blade of her sword up to head height to meet the cultist’s blade. The small blade glances off from Silvia’s large sword and sparks fall across her arms as the cultist shifts behind her. Silvia can hear the wet footsteps behind her and takes a step forward, turning around to face her attacker again. Swinging her blade downward toward the knees of the cultist in an attempt to cripple the enemy. The cultist jerks their knee the opposite way to break it at the kneecap. The broken leg, imbued with arcane energy, stamps down into the mud and pulls the cultist away from the arcing sword like a recoiling spider. Silvia lets her sword tip rest into the mud as she changes her grip to both hands. She'll need more control over her blade. The cultist stands on crooked legs ten feet away now, Silvia finally gets a good look at the cultist's face while she tightens her grip on her sword's throat. Mangled teeth chitter blood from the cultist's mouth and sunken face bones surround pure black eyes that rotate in the socket and seem to see omnipresently. Silvia spits a large amount of phlegm out onto the ground, it floats a bit in the muddy water of a footprint and gets stuck to a small rock. The mist begins filling the base of the quarry more and more. As Silvia begins thinking of combat advantages, the cultist takes a single lightning-fast step toward Silvia and then stops just as quickly. Silvia doesn't flinch at all, which she believes was what the creature wanted her to do, and squeezes her hands around her sword even harder. One of her knuckles pops and settles back into its rightful place again. A breath leaves her chest and she slows her heart rate slightly. Silvia steps two large steps towards the cultist, one large slow and the other shorter and quicker. She swings her sword horizontally. The cultist pirouettes backward with their legs spinning around underneath them in a disgusting display of a beautiful disengaging move. But Silvia's long blade catches the cultist's torso a few inches into its flesh, causing blood to spill out from the spinning body scattering its crimson across the battlefield.

The cultist stands awkwardly a few feet away from Silvia as she hears bones scraping against one another. The cultist's bones snap and crack until they are on all four limbs like some sort of demonic crab. The mist creeping higher and higher covers the majority of the cultist's new and disturbing form, other than the tips of the broken backward elbows and knees arching above the waves in the silver sea.

The creature's legs pull it forward quickly towards Silvia and hauls its form up into the air with a sickening movement and noise. Silvia drops below the mist as the cultist pounces where she was just standing. The cultist’s broken figure slowly emerges and crouches in a huddled position, still brandishing their sacrificial weapon with a tight grip on the end of one of their grotesque appendages. Ripples of waves pulse within the mist behind the cultist as they begin to scan the area in front of them. Perhaps they would be able to see Silvia’s movement around them if they didn’t sacrifice peripheral vision for fervent dogma and a bad sense of fashion. Silvia’s hulking body steps above the waves in one glorious movement, unseen by the cultist. Silently, and with the power only a warrior truly possesses, she plunges her sword directly through the back of the cultist’s head. A hollow and tinny scream emits from the corpse of the cultist creature that is now dangling limp from Silvia's blade. An uneven grinding sound, like teeth scraping against rock, emits from the darkness on the edge of the quarry as Silvia hears footsteps receding away from her fresh kill.

The dead cultist's teeth chatter and drip bloody foam as the weight hanging from her blade begins to tense her forearm muscles. Silvia pulls the creature from her blade and drops it to the ground, making a wet thud sound that stands out in between the pattering of rain on the rock faces. A small pearl of a sensation starts at the base of Silvia's spine and begins to crawl up her back until it reaches her neck and shoulders. She feels a rejuvenation spread throughout her entire body after the kill, adrenaline replaced with ecstasy. Her blood racing through her veins, the throbbing pain in her head clears for a moment, and the ringing in her ears subsides as the rain hits her face. Calmness. Security. A serene feeling washes over her skin and she gains a new focus to finish the task at hand. Silvia shakes off the rain pooling on her face and reaches inside the sackcloth robes of the fallen creature to pull out a small folded cloth. She unfolds it to reveal a kris blade and a handful of teeth. Silvia stows the kris blade onto her belt and sheaths her companion behind her back, she also places the teeth in a separate pouch on her belt. Silvia then grabs the cultist by the back of the neck, lifting it with ease, and drags the corpse over to one of the larger rocks. This rock appears to be different; dry, even in the heavy rain, and when Silvia heaves the body on top of the rock, a hissing sound escapes both the body and the rock. The cultist's blood begins to leak from the body and as it makes contact with the rock the blood boils and steams from the surface releasing an otherworldly breathy echo. Silvia kneels down, pulling her newly obtained kris blade from her belt as well as a piece of wet leather from a separate pouch, and begins to carve a symbol into the cultist's flesh.

A minute passes. Silvia's calm demeanor fades narrowly during the horrific scene that she is participating in and actively furthering. The blood from the dead cultist creature mixes with the rain falling off its back streaking off onto the large rock in translucent crimson lines. Silvia finishes copying the design of the symbol from the leather with a flourish and then jabs the knife into the back of the cultist creature, sinking it a few inches into the flesh. She stands back up and begins walking away from the ritual site of death, pulling her sword from its resting place and holding it in a single hand. Blood begins to pour from the once dry rock and Silvia returns her focus to the ritual and looks down at the soaking ground, "hm" she mutters as she allows the ritual to continue. The cultist creature is now entirely devoid of blood and other liquids. The corpse begins to shrivel and dry, even in the heavy rainfall. Pieces of the corpse dry and crack apart as the rain bombards the entity. This continues for almost ten minutes as Silvia patiently waits.

As the ritual finishes, the corpse of the creature is completely gone from the surface of the arcane rockface, the rock now etched with the symbol that Silvia carved into the cultist. The rain slows down to a trickle and then eventually stops. A soft pattering of remaining water falls from jagged rocks and overhanging root structures onto the quarry ground. As a response to this, the stones themselves make a sound of whimpering. Silvia looks around her to gauge the level of danger she has created for herself, the rocks continue to whimper and vibrate, almost shuddering from the cold, wet ground. The large ritualistic rock is motionless, as rocks usually are, until a large thunderous wall of sound explodes from the rock as it cracks in half and a long spider leg shoots out from within it. A five-foot-long spined hardened carapace-covered leg bends in multiple places and slams down into the wet quarry as Silvia stands motionless in the face of this horror. The leg gains leverage on a larger rock and begins to pull the rest of the creature from whatever depths it was spawned from. First, a large sac is wrenched from the split rock, and then what looks like a mushroom made of darkened steel bursts through the rest of the newly formed portal, shattering it entirely. The creature pulls the remaining three legs from the hole it burrowed through and finally stands tall against the moonlight. Silvia can see its full almost eight-foot-tall form now, and for the first time in a long while, she smiles.

The creature gets its legs under it and scans the horizon for something to challenge or eat, or both. Silvia’s adrenaline kicks in as her heart nearly explodes from her chest. She bounds towards the creature with such force that her hand almost doesn’t bring her weapon along with her. Renewing her grip on her sword she takes long strides up to the creature’s first leg and swings with a furious cleaving strike, landing a crushing blow and knocking the creature off balance for a moment. She continues the momentum of the flurry and strikes upwards into the sac of the creature. A piercing and guttural howl screeches from the top of the creature as it kicks backward, balancing itself on its hind legs and thrusting two of its legs underneath itself. One of the legs greets Silvia's side with the warmth of an old enemy finding you again. The creature pushes Silvia a few feet out from under it with its leg jammed into her side. Silvia instinctually drops her sword and reaches both hands down to free the seven-inch long needle from her side. She pulls the leg free from her body and rolls out of the way before the legs snap back at her to widen the already large hole in her torso. The creature, bleeding a vile black ichor from its under-sac, scampers up onto the side of the quarry to get away from the demon that is attacking it from beneath. Silvia grabs a potion from her belt and smashes it on the wound, keeping her hand there to force some of her blood to stay in her body. That was a stupid opening attack by her and she knows it with every pulsing rush of pain emanating from her wound. The blood quickly dries around her hands and the gash closes, sealing in some of the broken glass into the top layer of her skin. Silvia palms the remaining glass from her side and tosses it to the ground with a wince. Scanning the quarry grounds she doesn't see her target, because she doesn't look up.

Half a moment later Silvia is slammed into the ground with a massive and fully surrounding weight. Her vision goes dark but she can taste an acrid metal liquid dribbling around the edges of her mouth. She feels a crushing pressure building all around her. The damned beast must be trying to crush her with its giant sac! The weight begins to push the muscles around her bones and force the blood into her fingertips. She quickly remembers the wound that she stabbed into the underside of the creature. If she can taste the blood then it must be close to her face. Silvia opens her mouth as wide as she can and rams her lower jaw upwards into whatever she can get around. The large blanket of pressure lets loose with a disgusting, warming, and freeing sensation all at once. The creature staggers upwards spewing a large amount of ichor onto the ground in front of Silvia as she stands up reorienting all of her muscles into their rightful places on her body. She spits a large chunk of the creature’s sac onto the ground next to some of the glass she tossed earlier. The creature is now in a tailspin about twenty feet away from Silvia trying to free itself from the pain. Silvia reaches for her blade even though she knows it isn't there any longer. She does this in full consciousness, either from habit or for show. It doesn't matter though because it results in the same ending. Good thing for Silvia she is just as dangerous with or without her blade. She crouches down and begins to run straight at the toppling creature, bounds underneath again this time watching for the piercing legs, and tackles one of them to the ground twisting the creature into a contortion that pulls its body towards the quarry ground. Silvia scrambles to her feet and leaps upwards landing on the creature’s upper carapace. She begins to pummel a single spot on the hardened surface of this evil being. Each strike of her fists is asking the enemy to die, and eventually, she gets the answer she wants.

The mist pulls away from the quarry almost entirely as a brief sliver of the sun begins to peek above a rolling hill far off from Silvia’s battleground. She is slumped down and resting against the top shell of the dead creature, her eyes closed but still very much awake. As she blows out a hard quick breath, she props herself up on a single knee, retrieves her fallen sword, and begins to cut open the billowing sac of the evil beast. Not a difficult job since there are two holes in the sac already from her previous efforts. She tosses the sac skin open and reaches into the hot bloody center of this felled creature until she feels a cluster of hard objects, each about the size of her fist. The smell is overwhelming. A mixture of other-worldly over-ripened sweetness, fresh urine, and putrid death. She holds her breath as she reaches above the objects to feel for a stem, severs it with a swift compression of her fingers, and retrieves the prizes she has been after all night. The sun begins to land on the creature's body and slowly burns its figure into darkening ash. Silvia tucks the loot into a bag and walks away towards the woods, leaving the quarry a bit better and a bit worse off for visiting.

- Chapter III -

A quiet breeze, a dusty town, and a sign that exhibits both of the previous descriptions hangs above a doorway from a few half-hit-in nails: The Butcher’s Larder. The town itself is less than a dozen wooden houses all clustered together for either ease of access or protection or both. The Butcher’s Larder is a rickety building that rests between two other buildings that look almost identical, except that the Butcher’s Larder looks like someone actively lives and works within it. It's because they do. Inside, a large woman wearing suspenders and surprisingly clean farming clothes fixes an ornate metal device in her hands behind a counter. A small name is stitched into the front of the woman's suspenders: Gibb. She is about as rough-looking as the establishment she runs, but some of the growing seasons have treated her well and she has the form to fit it. The walls of the interior are littered with odd-looking tools, arcane items of function, and large hunks of salted meats. The building appears to be a general store filled with everything that one person wants to make a living out here. The dust on the wide wooden floorboards settles in for a long life as the sun continues its war of drying it out.

The door and bell announce the arrival of a customer loudly. Gibb pulls her gut back from resting on the counter and stares in Silvia's direction, “Ahh, looks like you made it back in more pieces than you left.”

Silvia grunts as shivers tingle up her bloodied side and she makes her way through the doorway and into the center of the room, dripping a trail of black ichor from a large bag over her shoulder throughout the establishment. The wooden floor happily accepts the warm liquid as a varnish. Gibb stares down at her establishment's floor and continues, “I can pay you what was promised for those creature bits, minus a bit of cleanup coin for the mess you dragged in.”

Silvia stares at the long blackened blood trail she’s left.

“Deliveries usually go ‘round back for this reason lady.” replies Gibb to Silvia’s muted anger.

Silvia glares at Gibb and tells her a story of aggravation in a single stare. Gibb doesn’t twitch a muscle, “Listen, I ain’t chargin’ you a mighty fortune fer it, but I have to make a livin' from this nonsense same as you. Creature Contracts ain't exactly paying my way in this world. Mostly just creepy old wizards want that stuff you're holding and I really hate dealing with them.” Gibb sets down the large chest-length tool she was tightening by hand on the counter. Silvia nods as she hauls the bag of creature parts up to the counter and through the rest of the store not caring about the mess now since she’s paying for it anyway, “Understood.” She sets the bag down on the counter with a sickening ‘squelch’. Gibb looks at Silvia with a wide closed mouth, a narrowing of their eyes and brow, and an exasperated huff. Gibb reaches under the bloody bag and retrieves her tool that she was mending, flicks off as much of the black blood as she can, and tosses the tool into a small metal pot of steaming liquid next to the counter. She pulls back up to the counter and starts pulling apart the bag, “What’ve we got here then?”

“Shen eggs.” Silvia replies before Gibb fully opens the bag.

Gibb closes the bag between her hands, “Right, and I’m Grand Armorer Kearnamarth just on a holiday down here in the middle of the frozen nowhere.”

Silvia emulates Gibb from earlier and doesn’t move a muscle.

“You serious?” she asks unnecessarily, “This whole bag is full of Shen eggs?” again, unnecessarily. Silvia patiently waits. Gibb opens the bag fully, closes it quickly, lets out a large bellowing cough, holds up her index finger to Silvia, clears her throat, coughs again, and then ducks behind the counter into an open hatch leading into the basement. Silvia is left alone in The Butcher’s Larder with a large number of bloody creature parts rotting on a countertop and a decaying trail of juices outlining the paths it took to get there. She wonders how much Gibb is going to charge her for the mess, then furrows her brow even harder thinking of a large amount of money. Gibb emerges again with long leather gloves on, metal clasps banding around the gloves, and an old towel wrapped and tied around the lower half of her face. Silvia looks at her like she is using a shovel to drive a nail into a rock.

“I’m not touchin’ nor smellin’ those things without the proper protection,” Gibb answers Silvia’s look of disappointment.

Gibb opens the bag again, this time more gingerly, and winces her eyes a bit. Silvia leans against the countertop. Gibb slides a leather-clad hand and arm into the bag to grab the Shen eggs. She removes the cluster of them and places them onto the now empty and deflated bag. The Shen eggs are still attached to a vibrant blue and purple stem where they are held firmly in place. There are about ten hard oval egg shapes strung from the stem. Each of them surrounded by a crust of darkened clay, malleable to the touch but suctioned to the objects. The objects themselves are brilliant translucent opals with swirling rainbows moving within them. “Unholy Mother Merdah,” Gibb whispers as she pulls back from the delicate operation she just performed. Silvia walks over to the window and shutters it closed.

“Good call,” agrees Gibb. “Don’t want these things too burnt up before you get-” she’s cut off as Silvia loudly puts her palm on the countertop with a piece of paper underneath it.

“Paid.” Silvia says simply.

“Ah, I see we’re done with the foreplayin’,” Gibb says, muffled through the shirt around her mouth. Taking off a leather gauntlet, Gibb turns her back to the counter and pulls on a long dangling chain that escapes into the ceiling. A bell dongs up on the second floor of the building. A short airy pause blows outside and then Silvia hears a faint scratching, a thud, and then a slow-paced walking of what sounds like two small children above her. “Won’t be but a minute longer me dear,” she says winking to Silvia and taking off the other leather glove, “I’ll get my best little messenger on the job to get that crotchety old wizard down here as fast as they can hobble.” 

Both of the women hear a series of loud creaks and metal squeaks as the spiral staircase bounces back and forth under the weight of what appears to be an abyssal terror. A large quadruped with deep darkened purple fur slowly stalks down the staircase and makes its way onto the main floor of The Butcher's Larder. The creature stands about stomach height and appears dog-like but with massively extended limbs and features with a bony spine protruding out from its back. Silvia, expecting a smaller humanoid or two, takes a step back and drips a drop of adrenaline onto the base of her skull. Instinctively she grabs for her sword over her shoulder. Gibb's hand pushes Silvia's sword back down into the sheathe, "Steady lady."

Silvia's rage pushes into her teeth as another person touches her weapon and encroaches into her space. She hates it more than anything, but she chokes it down since she is clearly outnumbered, in an unfamiliar environment, and has the lower hand. Her spine brushes off the shot of adrenaline and loosens her grip from the sword, but keeps her hand close to the blade.

"She's just checking you out," Gibb offers the calming sentiment as the beast immediately saunters over to Silvia and pushes her long snoot into her crotch and nudges around.

"Trixie! Get your head out of there you little demon!" Gibb swats at the back of the beast over the countertop as Silvia shifts onto her heels and pushes her weight backwards to create some distance between her and the beast. Trixie huffs and sits onto her large velvety dark haunches.

"Apologies about that hunter, she doesn't quite understand boundaries," Gibb motions to Trixie with a movement of her hand and gains the attention of the dark hound. Once Trixie realizes that Gibb doesn’t have a treat in her hand, she loses interest and stares back at Silvia with a bored expression. Silvia removes her hand from her weapon finally and lets it ease down by her side.

“Alright Trixie, I need you to go get the wizard and bring him back down here to the shop.”

Trixie raises her rear legs to bring her massive form up and into a standing position again. She pushes her front legs forward and drops her huge head low against the ground in a bowing motion. A large, and long-drawn-out, yawn bellows from Trixie’s maw. She returns to her standing position and starts wandering out of the shop, only periodically stopping to sniff and lick things off the ground. The wooden floor moans slightly as it loses its newly acquired varnish.

"And quit lickin’ that slop off the ground!” Gibb yells and throws her hands up in the air. “Damned beast is a sweetheart, but has a head full o’ rocks." The darkened beast somewhat stops licking the monster's blood off from the wooden floor and makes their way out of The Butcher's Larder.

Gibb looks back at Silvia who is still watching the beast lumber out of the building. “Should only be a minute or five for her to fetch that wizard.” Both women settle into an awkward silence as Gibb stares over the Shen eggs and Silvia just stares into the middle distance of the shop. Time passes and very little conversation is exchanged. The door gets nudged open slightly and then forcibly pushed aside as the hulking form of Trixie makes her way back into the shop with a thin man in a light blue robe in tow. He’s only slightly taller than Trixie and might come up to Silvia’s armpit if he wore the right shoes. Scruffy long gray-brown beard with long pulled-back hair that matches. A big fat nose stands as a foundation for his large glasses that hang on his face, which he is currently wiping with the end of his robe as he begins walking into the dusty shop.

“Ah, Parsley!” The man scrunches up his big nose when he hears Gibb speaking at him. “There you finally are. We’ve been waitin’ ages for you we have.”

“I am sure you have not and as I have said before that is not my na–AH!,” says the man at the same moment his legs shoot out from under him and he crumbles backwards to the ground, landing in the wet trail of blood that caused his fall.

“By Therth’s magick! What is all of this on the floor of your shop Gibb!?”

“Your Creature Contract. You should be more excited.”

“I’ll be more excited when I can wash all of this mess from my robe.” The magickal man stands up, catches and settles his footing, and then stands with as much dignity as he can muster. “Now, you have the egg fragments for me, hunter?”

“Waaay more than that Parsley,” Gibb answers. “Way, way more.”

The man walks, very carefully, over to the counter, steps up a small staircase to reach the top of the countertop and adjusts the glasses on his face to better see what Gibb’s arms are straddling. A force of wind quickly exhausts from his lungs as he steadies himself on the countertop, his eyes fully adjusting to the shadows around the objects in the darkened section of the shop. Gibb puts on a glove and slowly slides her hand around one of the Shen eggs. The man identified as ‘Parsley’ raises his hand and slowly gestures for Gibb to move her hand away from the magickal artifacts in front of them. Silvia stands towering over the man with the grimace of a rock troll and all the grace of a fart in a wedding gown.

He finally speaks, “D-do do you have a-any idea what we are looking at here?”

Silvia grunts and begins lifting the Creature Contract up into the air.

Gibb tosses the leather gloves onto the counter, spits onto the floor of her shop, and says, “I have a pretty good idea, yeah.”

The man begins to reach out and almost touches one of the artifacts, “These…are r-real. The actual real artifacts from a Shen creature,” he says unnecessarily while staring glassy-eyed at the items before him. He seems almost in a trance, not noticing the gleeful stares of Gibb smirking at him, not noticing Silvia grimacing and clutching her fist in impatience at him, and definitely not noticing Trixie licking more of the blood trails up from the wooden floorboards. “The genuine items in front of me. The actual, real, honest, artifacts here for me to study and learn from.” He begins to reach out and spark magick from his fingertips before Silvia grabs his wrist and squeezes far too hard for his liking, but not hard enough for her liking.

“Well, well, well. We almost got ahead of ourselves there, didn't we Parsley?” Chuckles Gibb as she’s putting away her gear and pulls out a long wet tool to start drying off and begin tinkering with again. “Looks like you almost started playing with your toys before paying the kindly, and patient I might add, hunter who risked life and limb to get all those shiny baubles for you.”

The man tries to free his wrist and fails, while Silvia flashes the Creature Contract in front of his face, “Payment. For my services,” she utters once and with a certain finality that only a hangwoman could offer. She releases his wrist and drops the paper over the top of the Shen eggs. He quickly retrieves the paper to both show haste of payment, and to not potentially damage the beautiful artifacts in his presence.

He starts rummaging through his robe’s inner pockets and pulls out a medium-sized leather bag with jewels sewn into the edges of it, “You know,” he coughs slightly and tries to adjust his shoulders and fake that his wrist isn’t hurting as bad as it truly is, “most hunters would have waited until just before the sunrise to sneak in a grab the Shen egg shells.” Silvia holds her giant paw out in the universal gesture of ‘demanding money’. “It’s what the original contract was for anyways–” his voice stops as he stares directly at Silvia who is staring back at him with silent patience for her payment. He starts to shake and pour out gold coins and silver nuggets from his leather bag.

“I think this is the beginning of a–” he gets cut off as Silvia grunts at him. “Why yes, of course. That couldn’t have been what I was going to give you,” he continues to pour loot out.

She grunts.

He pushes many more gold coins from his coin purse out into her cupped hand.

She grunts again, louder.

“If you’re interested of course, I have more Creature Contracts that I have written. One comes to mind when I look at you.” He shudders his spine and corrects himself, “Not that I was thinking of you in any sort of undignified manner of course good lady.” Gibb chuckles. The magician undoes more of the loop around the loot bag and shuffles out a few more coins into Silvia’s hand. “I just meant that I have a particularly perfect quest for you to go on that involves a quiet ornery fellow wizard.”

Silvia slams her other hand on the countertop, jostling the Shen eggs and alerting Trixie to the full attention of a half-asleep hound. “Pay me, take yours, and give me the forsaken contract already.”

He empties the rest of his purse into her hands and then just lays the empty bag on top.

Silvia grunts a shorter and slightly happier grunt this time, stows away the loot, leaves a few coins for Gibb on the counter, grabs her new contract, and heads for the door.

“Hey. Take some Salted Goblin with you.” Gibb nudges her heavy arms towards a large wicker basket sitting by the door and walks out in front of her counter with a small mop, “The stuff’ll start hardenin’ pretty soon an I’d rather see it go into someone than be buried with the rest of the scrapes I toss away.” Trixie moves her head slightly towards the food that is being talked about and Gibb rubs her long snoot. Silvia makes her way toward the door and grabs a small bundle of sticks with long strips of salted meat tied to them. She exits through the doors of The Butcher’s Larder with a newfound Creature Contract in hand.

– The End –