For A Better World 113
- Location
- ?
"What happened to his feet?"
JADES: "Looks like some kind of metal stake. Cast iron. Part of the reinforcement you mentioned?"
"No, these offer no structural advantage, they don't reinforce anything, they're just lodged in the calaneaus. Can you remove one?"
The doctor makes a few token efforts to twist and pull the stake.
JADES: "I'd have to dismantle the whole foot, it's held in place with some cross pins inserted deep in there."
THE BANE OF KADJ: "May I see?"
The sorcerer somehow snuck up behind you as you were concentrating, looming over you. You shrug and stand aside.
THE BANE OF KADJ: "An iron nail through the heel is a necromantic practice to bind a ghost. Most examples are not so... thorough."
MEI: "Told you to take your mask off."
THE BANE OF KADJ: "Oh, very well."
The sorcerer undoes a pair of hidden clasps under the rim of the mask and removes it.
Even next to the hunter's corpse, the sorcerer's pale face is distractingly gruesome. His left eyelid, upper lip and a portion of the flesh of his brow are simply gone. The wounds appear fresh, cut cleanly away, though no blood spills from the wounds. A bulge moves across his cheekbone like something is moving under his skin, and then is gone.
"Well, I can see why you wear a mask."
THE BANE OF KADJ: "Never heard that one before."
PRESENCE: He's being sarcastic. He's heard that one before.
JADES: "You let a leper wander around your camp without precautions, dragonlord? And onto my ship, without telling me as ship's doctor?"
MEI: "Exalted can't contract leprosy. Don't get distracted from the corpse."
SAGACITY: EXTRAORDINARY
CHECK PASSED
"It's jigsaw organ condition."
JADES: "It's what?"
The sorcerer's eyes widen in surprise. Or at least his right eye does. The left eye is already as wide as it's going to get.
"It's an extremely rare Essence derangement, noncommunicable. The body breaks down progressively, painlessly, but ultimately fatally. Limbs fall off and can be reattached, organs split in half and still function, but eventually the damage advances too fast to be repaired and the body decoheres entirely. He's bound a symbiotic demon into his body to perform internal surgeries and limit the damage, hence the movement under the skin."
THE BANE OF KADJ: "I have bound five. But yes, you are correct. Very impressive."
"How did you contract it?"
MEI: "I said don't get distracted from the corpse. The heel pins, what can you tell us about them?"
The sorcerer turns to face her. You can see the blood flowing unspilled through the neatly severed veins on his forehead.
THE BANE OF KADJ: "Little beyond what you have already learned. The pins are part of a spell used to bind a higher ghost to the owner's will. It's one reason why the possession of bones is so valuable in necromancy; even the ghost of an emperor must obey if a necromancer possesses the heel bones of his original body."
SAGACITY: Each person possesses two ghosts, the animalistic, passionate hungry ghost, and the higher ghost, which possesses memories and reasoning. In the case of the Exalted and other magical beings, the hungry ghost inherits a dark reflection of their magical power. What you fought seemed to be an amalgam of both.
"Can this method bind a hungry ghost also?"
THE BANE OF KADJ: "Not to my knowledge. But a hungry ghost is a simpler thing; they naturally reside within their original body unless displaced to another hiding place, and emerge to feed on blood. There may be another binding method."
"Let's keep looking then."
JADES: "Fine. What next?"
[ ] I want to look at the marking on the calf.
[ ] Let's examine the knee injury.
[ ] Need to check the rest of him.
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