[b][h2]Duskwood[/h2][/b]

The old barn was a riot of activity as Bautic crossed the threshold... through only two of the occupants were actually making noise. 

While normally there would have been trusted members of the Defias inside with the prisoners in order to make sure they stayed put, the nature of one of their captives had required... [i]special circumstances[/i]. So while the living patrolled and guarded the outside, within its walls the dead had been recruited to serve as jailers. Truth be told it made a surprising amount of sense when you thought about it; They wouldn't get bored, they wouldn't fall asleep or need to swap out for biological needs like eating or disposing of waste... and they sure as hell wouldn't be fast talked into doing something stupid. Plus it freed up people to take care of other things since they no longer needed to have members of the Defias actively in the prison barn.

None of that was why the undead were [i]needed[/i] for this situation, but promoting the additional benefits didn't hurt.  

The wolf creatures that had suddenly appeared throughout Duskwood... Worgen, some people called them... had proven to be something of a problem. The mining operation at Roland's Doom had ended in tragic failure as the wolfish creatures seemed to strike there first, wiping out all the brothers and sisters of the Brotherhood there before spreading out like the savage creatures they were... well, [i]almost all.[/i]

Ignoring the pained struggling of the other captive of the room, Bautic walked over to its more human occupant. Even if they were living up to their namesake. "Ah Jitters. I think you'll be glad to know that your information proved accurate. Believe me, if you had lied to me I would have been very [i]upset[/i]." 

Jitters sat, chained to the wall and looking like a defiled mess of himself. Spending time around the dead and the undead tended to make one accustomed to certain smells and foul odors, but Jitters had not bathed for weeks before he had been hunted down at Raven Hill and being locked up in the old barn hadn't helped his hygiene. The savage beating that had to be delivered in order to get him back here added the scent of old blood to the mixture too. 

"Y-You... You found th-that [i]cursed thing?![/i]" the poor, broken man screamed. Partially out of sheer terror, but there was a degree of making himself heard over the muffled, restrained noises of his 'roommate'. 

"We did not. We found enough evidence to prove that it [i]was[/i] there at some point, but alas forces unknown have currently absconded with it. But that isn't why I felt the need to have this talk with you."

Squatting down somewhat, Bautic resisted the urge to pull away from the awful smell that was Jitters. "Now, the [i]good news[/i] is that I can now say with certainty that myself and the rest of the brotherhood are not going to hold you responsible for what happened at Roland's Doom." Jitters managed to raise their head, surprise clearly on his wretched face as Bautic explained "Yes, what happened was tragic. A lot of good people died there. However, we didn't know there was such a powerful magical artifact there and you just happened to be the poor bastard who touched it first. Holding you accountable for an accident like that would be meaningless and cruel."  

"However!" Watching the hope be replaced by utter terror in Jitters' eyes was a wonderfully terrible thing. "...What is a little harder to forgive is the fact that you made no effort to contact the rest of the Brotherhood. You ran, you hid... and yes, the fact that there is some kind of warband after the Scythe can excuse that a little, but the moment you saw our people find you in Raven Hill you tried to flee... and when that failed, attacked like a cornered animal. It honestly looks like you abandoned the Defias cause and... well..." 

It was easy to see that Jitters was about to beg for his pathetic life. Rather then waste time with that, Bautic raised a hand to signal him to stop and be silent. "Let's just skip all the pleading and stuttering. I'm assuming you were going to say something about being willing to do anything to prove that you aren't a traitorous rat?" After a small moment of silence, Jitters nervously started to nod their head. "Good news then! I intend to take you up on that offer."

Standing back up, Bautic didn't even give Jitters a second glance as he turned and started walking to the other side of the barn. He paused briefly in order to inspect the second, [i]special[/i] prisoner of the barn in order to make sure that their bindings was still holding. The shackles were still locked on, the muzzle nice and tight... the large nails hammered into the worgen's body and limbs to pin them into the ground itself to heavily limit its movements and ability to struggle. One of the undead guards, the flesh having long fallen away and leaving bones, only needed a small gesture from its master before lifting up the sledgehammer and slamming it down on a nail that had been forced a bit further out of the ground then was acceptable. The muffled howl of pain was ignored. 

The living worgen was not Bautic's interest at the moment anyway. It was the dead one that he was focusing on. A few hours dead, rigamortis had started to set in but the body was still relatively flexible and more importantly; Its fluids were still fluid. Taking out a knife and a glass vial, Bautic performed a quick, surgical slice along a vein before pressing the vial up against the wound and... briefly restarting the heart's pumping with a little bit of necrotic magic. The blood that came out was long cold, but it would do. 

A second vial was pulled out, through rather then blood this one would be used to collect drool and other liquids from around and inside the mouth. Gloves were a man's best friend for such a task and the vial was sealed after the collection was done. Putting that away for later, the blood vial was in Bautic's hand as he turned and started to stalk towards the increasingly terrified and whimpering Jitters as the man stared at the vial in question. "We need to discover if further experiments require us to keep a live worgen around the place or if a dead one will do. Thank you for offering your assistance in this matter, Jitters."