Chapter 2. The Plague
“Don’t wander the gutter,
And, of course, don’t stutter,
Unless you wanna meet,
The murderer!”
Urchins’ proverb, Warclaw, Lower City
_____________
“Errr… Well, that ain’t banal,” a scrawny griffon sighed, crouching in front of the crooked and seared cadaver, letting himself soak in the rain pouring from the ripped open ceiling.
He ruffled through the scarce, deep grey feathers that peppered his chin and growled. Long streaks of black ran along his backbone, reuniting in the middle of his face, giving him a natural pair of glasses around his yellow eyes. He wasn’t a scholar, though. I could tell so by how much swearing he’d done since he had come in. He sat in front of the beheaded dual statue, uncaring at the rain trickling over his black cape falling over his fragile shoulders. Small and frail wings dangled limply on his sides, hidden beneath the fabric. From time to time a larger droplet hit his eye making him wince and grumble. He was not old but, oh Princesses I swear, he acted like an old rag.
A thunderbolt flashed across the sky, illuminating the church. The necklace around the griffon’s neck shone for a moment. It was an herald: an etched magnifying glass above a curved sword encased in a griffon’s claw. The jeweller’s fine work sent chills down my spine.
Ejit and I didn’t move. A huge imperious monster of dark brown fur with lighter-coloured natal rings around his ears was watching over us. When he entered the church, my jaw had gaped open: he was – at least – twice my size. I had even tried to duck my head between my shoulders like a tortoise when he had risen on his hindquarters. That bear was a monster with sharp teeth as large as my hoof! After an order from the griffon, he had us both, Ejit and me, pinned down with his two unblinking black eyes. He was wearing a cape similar to his chief. As it was obviously too small for his frightening frame, he had tied it around his neck like a scarf. The necklace, also similar to the investigator’s, was a mere earring piercing in his left ear.
Ejit had kept his eyes down since then. From time to time a quiver crawled across his legs. I had peered at the mass of muscles and fat only once or twice. Switching often from one foot to the other, he was repeatedly drumming his claws on the tiled floor, his patience withering as the storm strengthened outside.
Two black coated ponies were meticulously inspecting the statue’s surroundings. I had also spotted another griffon far in the background. Hidden in the darkness, he’d watched over the church’s entrance, waiting to deter any passer-by.
“Medved?” The grey griffon called with a faint whisper. “Proceed with an identity check.”
Never drifting his eyes away from us, that mass of testosterone called Medved grumbled, “Even Ejit?”
“Especially Ejit.”
Medved stretched his shoulders, wrestling some satisfying pops out of his dense articulations. Shaking himself, the air ruffling through his long fur, he stared at my companion of misfortune. At the mention of his name, and at how he wiggled on his hindquarters, I suspected that he was trying to shrink away through the cracks on the floor. Sadly, to no avail.
“Well,” Medved began, giving up his inquisitive bipedal position to a more comfortable quadrupedal stance. “You know the deal, Ejit. Show me your card.”
The poor light brown stallion jerked away from Medved’s stretching paw. To be honest, I did too. It was big enough to rip me in two pieces and the cut would not be clean. Ejit also said nothing.
“Ejit!” the bear warned, letting out a long sigh after the stallion avoided the reclaiming paw once again. “You’ve got it stolen again, am I right?”
Ejit’s shoulders dropped a little as he hung his head low.
“Oh, come on?” Medved grunted. “Who’s it this time? The Ponish gangs? They’ve asked your stuff again?”
Ejit said nothing, shame surrounding him like an aura that I wished to evade when it would be my turn to answer questions. Medved facepawed as he grunted in discontent.
“You look like you’re about to die. You know that stuff is really important. It’s how you get your food from the Directoire.” Medved ranted. He was definitely tired of it. “You know that, don’t you?”
Ejit nodded silently.
“And you know that the gangers you supplied can use your stuff to get past securities and harm people… not just ponies.” Medved paused, raised his claw and grabbed the monk by the neck. The way he shrieked told me that Medved’s embrace was painful. The bear growled, “You don’t want to hurt people, don’t you?”
“No,” Ejit muttered, a whisper of a sob in his voice.
The bear’s massive shadow cast over the feeble features of the starving priest. It was pitiful. I looked up at the ceiling from which the body had fallen. At first sight, it had been a unicorn stallion of an average size. its burnt flesh had left no clue about its fur and mane colours. The body had been fried by a blazing fire. When the investigator had arrived, the body had just cooled down enough not to smoke anymore. Its lips had slivered up, revealing two rows of cracked, yellow teeth. Its eyes had bulged out of their sockets and leaked off its cooked cheeks. I had not continued my swift inspection – I had ran in a corner and puked.
I caught two pairs of young bright eyes a few yards above my head. Two faces were spying on us. Children. A colt and a filly in their ten to twelve years. They seemed to have been chit-chatting, too low for me to hear. The filly, her pale white coat and ultramarine mane contrasting with the church’s brickwork met my stare. She ‘eeped, and both foals ran away in the darkness.
“Medved?” the griffon called.
“Yep, Crow?” Medved answered, turning away from Ejit whose cheeks trickled with heavy tears.
“Bring them back to me,” he ordered. “They might have seen something.”
“Why?”
“You’re good at it, tracking children.”
Medved huffed a laugh, rubbed his snout and hitched up his lips in a sharp wicked smile. With an overbearingly sugar-coated voice, bowing with a paw over his heart, he declaimed, “Your desires are my orders.”
His footsteps hammering the ground, Medved walked across the two other ponies who moved aside, definitely scared. As the bear was nearly out, Crow called him again, “Medved, do you know what the verb ‘to spay’ means?”
The voice, raspy and cutting, threw a cold in the church, even the griffon in the background peaked an ear at them. Medved had froze a foot mid-air and, unbearably slowly, he turned his head back at the grey and black griffon. The smile had vanished from his face, replaced with two blazing, murderous eyes that could bore holes at my soul. Ejit curled his forehooves across his chest, unable to suppress a small fit of whimpers.
“No,” he responded bluntly, one or two tendons of his neck pulsing unconsciously. “Beg to explain?”
“It’s what I will make sure will happen to you if I find out that you’ve touched those two kids,” Crow said. “I know your credentials.” Medved grinded his teeth and contracted a few muscles, but Crow’s words went faster, “Now go and find them both. Unharmed!”
“Kurwa,” Medved spat with a grimace before disappearing in the stormy night.
Crow let out a long breath of respite. Ordering to the two ponies to continue the investigation, he stood up from his crouched position and headed towards Ejit and me. He didn’t even give a look at the poor monk. He had eyes only on me, piercing and unsettling.
“And you,” he began. “Who are you?”
“My name is…”
He swept his claw at me and closed my muzzle with the tip of his sharp digits.
“I never asked you to speak. Do you have your card?” He looked sideways at Ejit. “Or you’re as reliable as him.”
I let the remark sink in without a peep, avoiding to glance at the stallion. He couldn’t hang his head lower. I untied my bag under my scrapped wet robe. From it, I pulled out the small card the mare with the bun on the dock had given me. Crow’s eyes moved back and forth between me and the identity card. A faint smile slowly crawled on his lips.
“Eh… Equestria, lady?” He raised a brow at me. “Just came in the city too? You’re lucky. You’ve been given a good taste of the city’s daily routine… and you’re still alive!” He laughed dryly. “Hope you appreciated the sightseeing?”
“I… I guess,” I struggled on my words.
He looked at the card again, rubbed his forehead as he was already tired of repeating the same procedures over and over again.
“So, miss Carat. Have you seen anything strange coming here?”
I sneezed. The soaked clothing glueing at my fur and skin spread a undesired coldness in my chest.
“Apart from a mare swearing at me,” I joked, wiping the tip of my muzzle with the back of my hoof. “No, it was too dark and rainy.”
I looked behind Crow at the two ponies marking the ground with little pieces of yellow paper, each sporting a different number. They had not touched the corpse, mangled and horribly bent by the fall. At least, the water pouring from the hole in the ceiling kept the reek out of our reach.
“And I was more cautious about where I was putting my hooves than stargazing,” I ended.
Crow chuckled and gave me a snarling smile, “Yep, better have your hooves right on the floor. The city won’t be gentle on you.” His voice tuned down into a growling warning. “I’m tired of finding newcomers in the sewers. Dead. Hope you can learn your way around.”
I gulped, “I…”
“Let’s go back to proper procedure, will you?” he cut me off, never dropping the grin off his lips. “Came with family?”
I shook my head.
“Place to stay actually?”
Again, I shook my head.
“Job?”
I pinched my lips, looked away and shook my head.
“Such vanilla girl,” he cackled as my cheeks tinted with a shameful red. “Hope you don’t get enrolled in the ‘filles de joie’.”
“fi-y…?” I stumbled upon my words as the words went over my head.
“Prostitutes,” a voice weaved behind me. I jumped aside with a squeak. “Cheap ones.”
Ejit and I stared at the griffon that had been guarding the gate. Sitting behind us, he preening the feathers off his rachitic wings. Under the spotlights of the candles stacked upon a near ebony desk, the brown of his fur and feathers was clearly visible. As my eyes wandered further down, it struck me. He actually was a she! She had a bulkier frame than Crow. She also wore the same attire as her smaller co-worker. What had caught me was her voice, too grave for a girl.
“I won’t fall to this kind of level,” I muttered back at her. She gave me a rueful grin.
“Crow,” she said. “We have to do extended research on the site, and especially on the roof. We should get the keys of the place and take the two suspects to the post… until we’ve find something here.”
Ejit’s eyes burst open and locked on the grey and black griffon.
“You can’t take me away, po- people might need me here.”
Sarcastically, Crow scanned the whole church for any other sign of life. Meanwhile, the female griffon walked back to the two other investigators. Crow sighed and put his claw upon Ejit’s shoulder.
“You’ll have to come with us.” Then he looked at me. “And you too.”
“Me?” I protested. “Why? I’ve done nothing!”
“The guy behind,” he answered, giving a nod of his head at the dead body, “may want to differ.”
Offended, I raised my hoof up to my heart, but was silenced by Crow’s raised index talon. He fixed Ejit with darting eyes.
“Your keys, Ejit,” he ordered imperiously.
The monk let out a long sigh and pushed back a strand of his mid-long blond mane to reveal one large brass key tied to the root of one lock. He winced as he ripped off a few of his hairs while he untied the key. He then hoofed it to the griffon.
“It opens everything.”
“Everything?” Crow asked with a raised brow.
“Well… You locked the access to the catacombs yourself, two years ago. And you never gave me back that special key.” There was a hint of resentment in Ejit’s piping voice, but never would it raise over a whisper of discontent.
Crow laughed open-heartedly. “Yeah, boss’s order. Seeing how you’re easy to talk in offering your belongings to ill-minded strangers, it was a good thing to do.”
Ejit fell back into silence that suited him all so well with the same resigned, defeated and expressionless face.
“So, are we under arrest?” I asked meekly. “I expected something of more… professional approach.”
“Maybe,” he replied with a smile and pointed his claw at his companion. “Let’s say that the Night Shift… isn’t the most lawful government wing out there.”
One of two pony investigators puffed, raising a hoof at his mouth to repress the laughter. He had been eavesdropping all along. Crow smiled at him, acknowledging the misdeed.
“I see,” I mumbled, avoiding crow’s eyes while I rubbed my hooves together.
I swallowed hard, the butterflies rustling in my belly making me fret.
“Eh, look at that,” one of the investigators whispered.
Crow’s attention departed from us and focused back on the corpse.
“Found something?”
Ejit covered his ears, humming a counting rhyme to cut himself from what was going to be announced. I wished to wander in another room. If not for the rain to temper the stench, I would have fled, but something else was struggling within me too: curiosity.
The ponies pushed the body on the side, its raide limbs cracking up as it moved. Some of its skin fell like dried and seared scab. A spasm crawled through my left cheek. The oldest of the two waved his hoof along the corpse's backbone. I pushed myself on my haunches trying to see what he was pointing at.
“Look here, shards of wood are embedded in the skin.” I bit my lip as I saw him clenching his teeth on something and extracting the object from the flesh in a ripping splash. He spat it between his hooves and wiped a few droplets of blackened blood off his face. “Pretty deep.”
“Well,” Crow started, “he fell from above.”
“Do you see wood around you?” the pony noticed. “On the walls? In the debris?”
Crow scanned the area, pondered a few seconds and nodded. “So?”
“He may have been blasted away by a bomb.” The pony held the shard on the back of his hoof and cast a wondering look at the griffon. “Any terrorist attack today? A bomb in a cart?”
“No. No,” Crow rejected. “And even if they had been one, I know no explosive capable to throw a pony that far.”
“Wanna take a bet?” The pony replied as his assistant made another tour of the statue.
Another thunderbolt beamed in the sky with the same repeating splash of rain on the tiled floor.
“Well, I’d glad-...” Crow stopped in track as he looked down. I could see his skin turn white beneath his sparse face feathers.
The pony looked down too and his eyes meet two black shining dots. Two dead malignant eyes. We all gasped. the body, dead until now, shrieked and I heard a splash. It wasn’t from the rain this time. The black and white tiles rapidly dyed crimson. The pony investigator Crow had joked with screamed, or rather tried to. Two ranges of clenching teeth mauled his neck. Blood squirted off deep holes in his flesh and splattered Crow’s face. Trying to wipe the red of his own eyes, he fell on the ground and moaned in pain.
Like a piece of paper being torn in two, the mass of scabs we had believed dead bit in further, reached the bones and forced again… The head of the investigator fell off with a sickening scream, quickly silenced as it rolled in my direction. Ejit had frozen, eyes widening and nearly bulging out. I tasted bile in my mouth. It crawled up my throat and reached my tongue. I swallowed back. The acrid smell washed over my senses.
The burnt body threw the headless bag of meat aside. It slid off the air and crashed onto the soaked prayer plates, adding red on them. Silently, the dead stallion rose on its four limbs and exhaled steam out of its broken snout. Its eyes were gleaming ominously with a grey aura. The second pony cried out and fled towards the exit. He never had a chance to step outside.
In a move that forced one or two bones to spurt out of its flesh, the… monster… hacked sideway and thrust himself on the investigator’s back. he screamed, trying to get away from the monster. The maw cut through the black cape, sawed off the necklace and attacked the bottom of the investigator’s neck. The crush came off with two vertebrae enclosed between the beast’s broken teeth. I felt dizzy.
“Don’t let it get away!” Crow screamed as he continuously tried to rub the blood off his eyes. “Don’t!”
It turned around and faced us. My eyes met its. Across its desiccated face soaked in blood tore a smile. It trotted forward in our direction, nearly playful. Its right foreleg was bent in the wrong way and I could see the kneecap thrusting out of the skin, cutting a dent in the flesh at each new step. The head was curved inward and a vile pink and brown liquid was oozing from its right eye socket. A fallen eyeball was dangling at its nerve, bouncing on its cheek. Flesh was stuck between its teeth. Its movements were erratic, random. Although I could see the hunger on its cut open lips. It was coming.
A wave of coldness washed over me. The wild pounding of my heart was the only sound I could hear. Blood was rushing through my temples with great pain. My stomach churned. Ejit gagged, tampering his whimpers with a sound that made my skin crawl. He scrambled around and started running to the nearest door… locked. The sound of his struggles with the wooden gate startled the monster. It jumped, its dented hooves the first things aiming at both of us.
With a cry, the brown griffoness caught it mid-air, using a candelabrum to stick it to a nearby column. The monster whirled on its pinned position, sweating blood and mucus and drooling a sickly goo that made me turn my head.
“The fuck!” she screamed. “It wasn’t supposed to get back to life!”
Crow shouted but the din the monster was creating silenced his words.
“Flee, flee, flee, flee, flee,” Ejit repeated over and over again, febrile.
Getting nowhere with the lock, Ejit rushed towards Crow, grabbed himby the waist and pulled the brass key he had hoofed over off his belt.
“What are you…?” the female griffon protested. Big mistake.
Tightening its two hooves on the multi-headed candelabra, the creature threw itself on the side, snapping its own neck and sending the griffon on the ground. Her shoulder hit the tiles with a crack and she growled in pain. The beast jumped on her, but Crow kicked it away. He had finally managed to open one eye.
It dodged Crow’s second kick. To my stupor, it grabbed his leg and bit in deep with a cunning and wretched smile. Crow shrieked and wiped off clean a tenth of its face with a large blow of his talon. It didn’t kill it. It merely pushed it back a second. The griffon built on the momentum and punched it away. The sac of broken bones and burnt flesh rolled away and it was still moving.
“Ejit!” Crow screamed. “Open the fucking…”
Ejit was already at the backdoor of the church, behind Celestia and Luna’s statue. He dropped the key once, twice… He was crying, and the salty tears in his eyes didn’t help his quivering hoof to open the fucking door.
For the first time since ever, the creature howled. Its complaint shattered my ears, making me scream in pain. My head practically felt like exploding. Needles were jabbing at my skin, cranium and further beneath me from inside out. Cold, and hot intermittently, it made my vision reel. I rolled on my side.
I think I blacked-out for one or two seconds. When I opened my eyes, it was there, right above me. Its tongue stretched out from its bloody mouth. A spark of fear rushed through my nerves. He was already lowering its head to bite. The two gaping eye sockets locked on me. Its eyes had now completely fallen off. What stared down at me was some liquefied brain dripping onto my face. I pushed my hooves to its chest as its teeth clacked a mere blade’s width away from my cheek, its reeking murky saliva sputtering onto my hide. My legs wobbled, numbness overtaking me. As it forced its way, my hooves slided off its chest to its shoulders and sides. What I felt at the tip of my left hoof made me gag.
I struggled to force it back. My left hoof slid away… My left hoof slipped on its side… inside. It entered the body through a hole just beneath its left shoulder with a squishy, slurring noise. At first it had been as thin as a beverage coaster. However, after showing a tiny bit of resistance, it had stretched open like a wound and made no resistance. As the monster continually tried to eat my face, I felt my hoof slip in the round-shaped wound. And, as my hoof literally slided inside the beast, I came to lock in a position I couldn’t escape. I was tetanised. A hoof stuck, I forced my free limb onto its back so that he had no space to bite me. I felt the wretched air it exhaled weave over my back as its head was right next to mine. it couldn’t bit me in this position. Its teeth still scrapped on my fur as it munched on my green mane. Its cracking jaw kept echoing in my left ear. As he scrambled on me, the disgusting fluid on its cheeks peppered my face.
“Help!” I cried out.
The beast struck the tiles with its hindlegs and threw both of us in the air. My back hit hard against Celestia’s statue. Unable to breath, I dropped my hoof lock. It roared, swerved around and bit onto my mane. Pain burst on the back of my head as it pulled on my hair and threw me flying across the room with a rotation of its head.
Head first, I crashed on the door Ejit was desperately trying to pry open. The sheer impact shook him and, screaming, I heard Ejit drop the key, again. I could taste iron in my mouth. I was bleeding. The creature screamed so loud I lost my hearing for a couple of seconds.
“Shaddup!” the griffon girl barked over, bashing a candelabra over its head until the iron had curved.
The creature was gurgling with bubbles of blood as it brought itself back onto its hooves. The griffoness was panting, the candelabra held quizzically between her two trembling claws. It turned back and jumped on her. Crow kicked it again far away.
“Open the fucking door!” he screamed.
Ejit stuttered an answer as he finally pushed the key in the lock and turned.
He rushed in first, the griffon girl threw the used candelabra away and snatched another one resting aside a nearby colonnade. Crow grabbed me by the hooves, hauled me over his shoulders and ran as fast as he could. I think I puked on his cape.
“It’s coming back!” Ejit shrieked, his nose leaking and mixing with his tears.
Crow threw me on the floor in a long dark corridor. He and his griffon counterpart tossed their two bodies on the door, trying to close it. The creature rocketed on the other side and a plank of the door exploded in splinters. Its head was jutting through a hole. In a moment of wit, both Crow and the other griffon took the remaining candelabra and forced it down the creature’s neck. I drifted my eyes from the door as they started their work on the whirling monster. I was stinking, hurt and horrendously exhausted.
I rolled on my back until I could face the dark brick ceiling. It seemed incredibly low hanging after spending one hour in the church. My vision reeled atrociously. I lifted my left hoof above my head, the one I had stuck in the undead’s wound. A black stream of murky water fell on my face, dripping from my left hoof. The liquid slipped in my mouth and I gasped. Like a burning cold coffee mixed with sewer sludge, it attacked at my tongue. I screamed. It was the creature’s blood. My whole left forehoof was blacked up to my shoulder, splatters inked over my chest. I refused to picture my face. I just screamed.
My howl sparked a new wave of strength in the monster. Crow had broken down the candelabra into two sharp metal sticks, and had given one to the brown griffoness. I should really have asked her name… Together, they had been repeatedly stabbing the creature’s neck, severing half of the wretched skin and flesh. Though, the neck bone was more resistant than they had originally thought.
It started destroying the piece of wood that separated us from its deadly and sharp hooves. Splinters showered us. Crow dropped his improvised crowbar and kicked Ejit forward down the narrow alley that led to the basement of the church.
“Down, down!” Crow barked.
“You, stupid Night Shift, closed the access to the catacombs!” the brown priest pony blared back, raising his shrilling voice for the real first time. His eyes, red with tears, riveted on the scared black griffon. In this moment of faint revolt, Ejit bit his lower lip to the blood.
Crow was not patient. He punched Ejit in the face, knocking a couple of teeth out of his mouth and repeated the same words again and again: “Down. Down. Down!”
Ejit crawled back to his hooves as the creature finally blew in the corridors, growled and jumped in the way, chasing us. We ran for our lives
We hurtled down a series of stairs and nearly slipped off the layer of water pouring through the humid cracks in the ceiling.We reached another long corridor with one door in the far back. I could see a yellow piece of paper nailed to the lock with a seal on the hinge. We had made it to the catacombs, and it was locked.
Claustrophobia kicked in and my eyes, searching for an escape, locked on a door on our right, cracked open a little. We burst and locked ourselves in. The beast rammed into the door. Dust fell off the bricks above our head under the assaults. The door started bending.
“What are we gonna do?” Ejit sputtered.
“I don’t know, think! Think!” Crow answered, his claw trembling as he rubbed maniacally his chin.
Only illuminated by a forlorn torch next to the door, we were all panting and staining the dirty floor as cold sweat ran down our brows. Dusty old shelves were aligned in the room. Brownish candles, antique books and useless pieces of rusted metal were stacked upon them. A few amphores rested on the back wall.
The beast’s impervious throws ripped off a part of the door. It flew past above Ejit’s eyes, nearly knocking him out. The ceiling growled and creaked.
“It’s going to fall over!” The griffoness warned.
The beast sent himself in the wall. The world shook. Bricks and lintels collapsed from the ceiling. An impenetrable cloud of dark smuck engulfed us all. I heard clay breaking. I caught the female griffon crying out for help.
Half of the door was already smashed open. The undead monster was kicking his forehooves at it to reach us, in a vain attempt so far. Its empty sockets were devouring us through the smoke.
“Help me!” she called out.
As I waved the dust from my face, I saw that half the ceiling had crumbled down on her, trapping her hindquarters under a large chunk of rock. The hole in the ceiling was not big enough for us to slip in. No exit route for us yet.
Her hindlegs were broken by the sheer weight of the the rubbles. She was crying, hitting the floor with her bare fists as spasms crawled along her spine and cheeks. In my back, the undead’s attacks on the door were like the ticks of a rushing clock. I had to think fast.
Why were my hooves slimy?
I looked down and saw a crawling liquid spread across the room, slithering through the cracks and broken down shelves. Oil. I looked at the stacked amphores, some had slid aside and broke on the floor. Their content spread across the room that was going to become our tomb. I wasn’t the only one to see that.
Crow’s stare hesitated back and forth between the amphores, the ground, me… the griffoness… and the torch. Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no. He caught my stupor. I raised my hoof.
“No, you d…” His fist against my cheek silenced me.
Trembling, he rushed at the amphores, forced on his back legs, grabbed one and hauled it over his head. His comrade, trapped under a pile of stones we hadn’tthe time or the strength to lift, began struggling. She hacked and screamed as Crow was coming close. We all understood what he was going to do.
“Please,” she begged. “No, please, please... please! Don’t!”
Neither Ejit nor I did anything to stop the maddened Crow. Maybe was he the sanest?
Crow knocked the amphore down, breaking the clay recipient over his comrade's head. the oil soaked her. It slurred down her face. As she screamed bubbles formed around her mouth.
The beast renewed its attack on the door. Ejit and I glared with dread at the black and grey griffon as he took another amphores and smashed it down in front of his wounded friend. With his talon he spread it on the floor as much as he could.
“Please, I don’t want to die,” the griffoness supplicated.
“One for three. It’s a good deal,” Crow blurted with his whimpering, hesitating voice. “Remember the tabletop strategy game.”
She hiccuped a long, gagging sob and whispered, choking on her words, “please I don’t want to… die. Please.”
He didn’t answer. She wailed so loudly I shut my ears with my forehooves. Crow grabbed me and Ejit by the hooves.
“You rush out when I say,” he ordered, his voice so convinced it was petrifying.
We were too afraid to nod. He threw a last glance at his friend.
“Thanks,” he just said.
“I’ll kill you!” she threatened. “You heard me! I will rip your throat with my beak!”
Crow snatched the torch off the wall with his right talon. Then, he unlocked the chunk that was left of the door. The monster brawled in and, seeking for the noisiest target, pushed Crow aside and jumped on the griffoness’s face. A sickening rip of flesh and loud crush echoed. I shivered.
Falling, Crow hit the floor and dropped the torch. It bounced on his arm, covered with oil. His limb burst into flames. the rest of the room quickly followed.
The fire ate at his forearm and he screamed. He raised on his back legs and ran to the door, his fur and feathers searing on his arm, melting. The fire crawled up to his neck. As he went outside the room, he threw himself in a thin puddle of water that had formed with humidity. The oil didn’t tame down, though. He simply rushed up the stairs toward the rain. Ejit followed him on his wobbly legs.
As I looked back at the infierno swallowing the storage room, I shivered at the fire gnawing at everything it contained. The griffoness, I never came to know her name, was still screaming. I had to step back onto the staircase, back to the church in the land of the decrepit living, to be finally welcomed again by the numbing sound of silence.
I fled.