[X] Take the hunter's whole body.
You look down at the bisected body. It's leaking a thick, dark fluid, blood congealed for weeks after death. You try to suppress your apparently intimate knowledge of the rate at which blood decomposes. At least most of the entrails seem to have already been removed, including the intestines, making the wound much cleaner than it otherwise would have been.
You prod the upper body with your boot and roll it over. It's heavy. You see the glint of dark metal sheathing a severed rib. He's not a small man either.
PHYSIQUE: Even dessicated, near naked and with removed organs, he's probably too heavy for us to carry.
EMBASSY: Not to mention too unsanitary.
PHYSIQUE: Maybe you could drag him around somehow?
CRAFT: He had a big chain, we could use that.
Without any other obvious options, you retrieve the severed head and the discarded chain-blade weapon from the middle of the clearing. After a little experimentation, you decide that the best way to transport all three parts is to tie the head to your belt by its dried hair and loop the flexible chain twice around the two halves of the corpse.
Now, which direction are you going in? You got turned around several times during the fighting.
NAVIGATE: DIFFIC-
Wait, never mind. A distant explosion ripples through the air. A flash of white fire, sound like a thunderclap. A moment later, the breeze shifts, not the unnatural wind changes of the island, but the ripples of a distant shockwave. The heat of the burning forest briefly intensifies.
Mei must have met an enemy in battle to the north of camp. With that point of reference, the route back to camp is easy enough to figure out.
Your head feels light. You tell yourself that you are just coming down from the adrenaline high of battle.
Looping the chain over your shoulder, you lean forward and begin the hard work of dragging the corpse towards camp. The ground is less than ideal; the rain mixes with ash and fresh-turned soil to form pasty grey mud, slick to the touch. More than once, you stumble, but you persist.
Just as you think you might be headed in the wrong direction after all, you hear voices. You come to a halt, looking around for the source. A soot-dusted face peers up at you, as though it just popped out of the dirt.
"Hey. What are you doing in the ground?"
LEGIONARY: "I'm in a trench, lady."
"Oh, that's right. Is Colter still here?"
There is a flurry of activity as the woman rushes to get her officer. You note a dozen or so Raigi bodies. Apparently, they attempted to storm the trench during your fight.
Colter hoists himself over the lip of the trench and comes to greet you, followed by one of his subordinate officers.
COLTER: "Lady. You've seen action."
It's not a question. It's probably pretty obvious.
"Yeah. I got..." you take a moment to calculate. "...twenty five, including the leader here."
He looks down at your burden.
COLTER: "Well, it looks like you dealt with him."
"I want to burn the body."
COLTER: "Maybe you should let us take care of it, magistrate. You're wounded."
"No I'm not."
He looks you up and down. He seems to resolve to press the issue.
COLTER: "You've got a lot of blood on you."
"It's not mine."
You look down. There's a lot of red. The Raigi you fought had grey blood.
"Oh, maybe it is mine."
You take stock of your injuries. You still have an arrow protruding from your leg. Your right arm hangs limp, broken again now the rejuvenating Essence has departed it. Your left forearm is also fractured. You have a deep cut on your left palm and a deeper one on your right flank under the ribs. You are steadily losing blood.
It hurts a lot, you just weren't paying attention. You shrug, unsure how else to react.
[ ] I think I should see a medic.
[ ] I think I can probably walk it off.
[ ] I'll just have a lie down here, if you don't mind.
