Artholath found little more interesting in the conversation between the two scientists. He walked over to one of the tables, finding few experiments to catch his eye. One, however, did.

It was by no means attractive nor with much going for it in terms of looks, but it did have an interesting anatomy, with the legs of a scorpion, yet wings of a raven, and an obviously pissy attitude by the way it banged against its cage. Useful, perhaps, as a distraction. “I think I like this one…”

He took the cage and walked out, into the cottage and out in the woods. He spotted a well and decided to head in that direction.


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Captain Dreslin ignored chunks of the man’s words; he could tell the guy was out to get something and had no care in the world about what he was talking about. When he arrived at the scene, however, he was surprised and disgusted at what he found. Several of the dozen following guards puked.

The corpses had decayed quite a bit and the ground around them was soaked in mushy substance, with maggots, flies and every other little pest that could get to them. Large holes were evident in the bodies. The captain choked at the sight. Dispite the mess, the guard uniforms were still obvious.

“...what the… hell…” He resisted the urge to puke.

“How long has this been sitting? Must have been weeks!” One of the few guards that didn’t puke asked.

“Even sitting corpses don’t have maggots that size!” retorted another that did.

“Alright… we’re going to need to call in some folks that know how to deal with this. Come along stranger, some folks at the castle might be interested in hearing your tale.” He gestured to Diego.