As Rois heads for the butcher’s bench, Osytha spares a backward look at the row of dozing mules. Intelligent, strong, hard workers… aye, they get their temperament from asses, right enough. She’s also fond of the beasts, even keeps a couple of donkeys around at the monastery, herself. But you didn’t quite mention one of the big differences, did you, Mr Crocodile? It’s not just that asses don’t bolt. If they feel threatened, they stand and fight. I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that’s summat else you have in common.

She trails after him, moseying along with her arms folded while taking in the camp; its company wagons with their curious emblem, the array of tents forming an outer ring around the big central one. Osytha scans about for movement besides Feliene there, tries to get a sense of what other souls reside here and their number, though, it’s reasonable to assume many are asleep in their beds at this point. Her nose points her over to that simmering pot, which she tries not to think too hard about — neither that, nor the things its aroma is awakening in her empty stomach. Guffy, on the other hand, doesn’t at all share her apprehensions. His little nose is lifted high and twitching overtime as he circles the cooking fire.

The sound of Gilles thunking down on the butcher’s block hits her ears. Then, something flops to the ground nearby, filling the air with a bouquet of sweat. Osytha glances down at the stained shirt by her feet, then up toward the brittle tinkling of water by that tub.

Mr Crocodile basks there, anointed by its cool waters. Curls of mist condense off his flesh as vapour strikes cooler air. Bare-chested, and she can better see now his physique. Sculpted, is how she’d put it. The kind of body those masochists who beg Dal for his toughest regimens, and actually stick to them, end up acquiring. Now, Osytha keeps herself very fit, and very strong… for a 5’8” woman whose body has a lot of trouble escaping the gravity well around planet ‘lean’. As suspected, though, it’s nothing compared to the Crocodile Butcher’s.

She lets her gaze slide off him. Back toward the table and its contents. She walks forward, circling around the mortal remains of Gilles Despenser lying bundled up in the disguise she’d used of kirtle and petticoats. Seems they’ve done a decent job of keeping the mess in. Something of an unforeseen benefit to having a ridiculous number of layers, there.

Rois comes back into view soon enough. Hands digging into the wood as he tests it with his bulk.

“You do not have to stay to actually watch this, you know. I just needed you to bring the body here.”​

Osytha locks eyes with him, momentarily surprised.

“Careful, now,” she warns. “That almost sounded like you was bein’ kind.”

She looks back down at Gilles, and if there had been a hint of amusement just then, it’s soon all gone. Unbind him, peel away the layers, and there he is. Five-foot-eleven, stocky, black-haired and bearded. A man of nearly three dozen summers. Defensive cuts on his hands, and one terminal stab wound through the heart. A post-mortem incision along the throat, leading to exsanguination. His face and hair are crusted stiff with blood from how it had drained off him when she’d strung him upside-down beneath the tree.

“If you prefer privacy, you can have it,” she continues. “But this is my doin’… and I try to make a point of seein’ things through. Besides, I wanted your help, didn’t I? I ought to know what it is exactly I’ve wished for.”
 
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“I did not say that out of kindness. I don’t care what you see, I am simply cautious about how much of this you’re going to report back to your little friends.” … And it did not seem like he took her humor as a ‘joke’, because although his expression is not as severe as it had been at the start, the crinkling of the mans nose and the furrowing of his brows speak quietly of distrust still coursing strongly through his mind.

“My guard isn’t down just because I’m not actively being a bastard. We’re still enemies, you and I,” Rois picks up the broad length of the cleaver and points it at her from across the table in an accusatory pose, “We simply have something in common currently--”

THWACK-- a sudden and short explosion of noise-- the heavy blade is brought down against the clammy pale skin of the captive about the pre-slitted throat; it is the crunching of a windpipe collapsing and the snapping of meat suddenly sundered, the sharp length nails the gaps betwixt the cervical vertebrae violently and so the loud and singular crack the melody finished with was the separating of the spine in two. A gory gunshot in the dark. And without its anchor… Gilles’s head rolls unevenly to land softly against the dirt without any sort of thoroughfare, bottomed by a muddling of dark, clotted blood and the rings of damaged pipes exposed. Rois is a bull with a sharp edge, snorting at the expression cemented on the now decapitated man’s head, but as he opens his mouth to say something the two are rudely interrupted by the small form of an elf skittering into the scene--

“Oh! Oh! I’m an enemy, too!” The shimmering of Feliene’s crystal blue eyes had dimmed somewhat, and across her cheeks was scrawled a heavy flush… the consequences of weaving, any who knew magicks of any kind would see and know the dampening effect it had upon its users. It could not steal away her smile however, nor the way a petite arm was lifted to wave in Osytha’s direction erratically. The other hand was occupied, not by any kind of dead-mans game, but humorously by a… carrot. The girl held it up to her bosses face with the expression one would make when feeding a treat to a dog,

“Anyone who is Mr’s enemy is our enemy as well!”

… And what a strange scene. A headless body, a twisted skull upon the floor, a small elven lady comprised of sparkly energy gently thwaping the vegetable against a man’s cheek-- a man who was double her height and probably double her width as well. His response to the carrot is not, get this fucking thing out of my face now, but to open his jaws and bite at it hungrily, let it hang from his teeth just like he was a dog given a treat. The same man that threatened to kill her. The same man that threatened to rape her. The very same man who had been carrying cut up corpses in the middle of the night with glowing red eyes like warning signs in the dark. Feliene’s energy suddenly ramps up at the sight, cute, despite her words she is as friendly as ever in her tone,

“And Mr Crocodile is kind, sometimes.”

Rois is chomping on the raw carrot whilst his hands use the scissors to slice through Osytha’s makeshift bindings, but a growl begins to sound from his throat in warning as the vegetables green tails stick out from his mouth; it is very much ignored.

“If you tell anyone about us, he’s going to turn into a big monster and eat you all up. I’ll be the one collecting and freezing the pieces left over, because that’s my job! But not this,” The bouncy girl stoops low to pick up Gille’s head by the hair, tongue out and wearing the exaggerated expression of disgust, “Ugly… I’m going to take it to the burn pile. No-one’ll eat this--”

The moment the end of the carrot was swallowed down and a tongue was swiping against fangs hungrily the deep, guttural voice returned,

“--Why are you here, why are you saying things, why are you being a thorn in my side--”

Rois’s hand is like a bear paw that comes to swipe at Feliene’s torso as if he aims to bat her away with tremendous force, but despite the size and strength displayed in his arm… the movement is painfully slow, deliberately slow, just so the elfkin has the chance to dodge out of the way. Gods, he was losing his fearsomeness by the second, every single moment the elf spent in his presence his intimidation factor absolutely tanked, and the man was critically aware of this. It took everything to mentally not run a hand against his face in embarrassment at the affair… but dear Lords. The body was free from its confinements and his movements had become somewhat violent as he cut lines and ripped clothes from the corpse until it laid there barren of fabric-- this was also done deliberately. The moment the body’s penis was exposed Feliene gave a frightened gasp and began to skitter away in alarm with the head cradeled against her chest, oh, it was too much to bare, and Rois let the smallest amount of smugness grace his lips as his attention turned back solely to the lady in waiting,

“... Your complaints will fall on deaf ears if you insist on watching and get sickened by it, knight.”

Yes. Let’s not address any of what just happened whatsoever.

A scalpel was equipped, a long line drawn down from the open hole at the seat of Gille’s chest, it delves deep within skin as flaps part and expose the inner muddling of shrinking fatty layers and darkened organs all congealed together in a reeking blob as the smell of decomposition is suddenly let out into the open air. It fades quickly, but the stench is one none could forget, not if they had ever seen any semblance of warfare. He’s completely unphased of course, gloveless he shoves his hand against the mass at the center and begins to simply rip stuff out, palming the length of grey entrails and shoving them unceremoniously to the ground with a thick, wet slopping sound. When things were tied by thicker veins the other hand was introduced, fingers wind about sinewy ribbons of the network and snap them with precision, first the slippery sheen of the liver and then the dull blobs of the kidneys; floor, floor, floor, useless things. The lungs were tricky, but without the head to affix them to something more solid the white-ish lobe of the right lung, now flat and quivering, was tugged out and not tossed haphazardly to the floor… instead of glancing at the woman he is looking behind her. The object is tossed over her head to land unceremoniously right beside the snuffling Guffy…
 
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There’s a certain horror to the ease with which Rois severs that head. Osytha understands that decapitations are difficult — notoriously so. And you hear stories, ones where perhaps the headsman’s axe was just a little too dull, or hadn’t landed quite right. Awful, awful stories. Not that uncommon when it comes to such things, either.

So to see him achieve that with a mere cleaver, almost as an after-thought…

Osytha blanches, staring at Gilles’ head lying there against the ground. It’s landed to face away from her, showing just the blood-soaked curls, a red hint of ear, and the wet gleam of sundered bone and muscle in his neck. In a way, that only makes it easier. Easier for her to see—

“Oh! Oh! I’m an enemy, too! Anyone who is Mr’s enemy is our enemy as well!”​

Her eyes dart to the surprise appearance of the young elf from before, and she follows Feliene’s ebullient movements with some surprise evident on her pale face. Eventually, Osytha holds up her hands in a placating sort of gesture of her own, and gives the lass a weak little smile.

“Got it, loud and clear,” she assures. “I’ve already surrendered, anyway. Honestly. I ain’t actually lookin’ to cause trouble here.”

Rois continues the business of unwrapping his wares, revealing all the cuts in potentia; shanks, rib, shoulder, belly, etc. The sight of Gille’s sausage, though, sends Feliene packing, and Osytha watches after her retreating back. Well, what had the girl been expecting? It’s more or less the same thing down there each time, broadly speaking. In her experience, anyway.

Still, she muses, thank you, Feliene. I’m fairly certain you just gave me the last piece of the puzzle that I needed…

“... Your complaints will fall on deaf ears if you insist on watching and get sickened by it, knight.”​

She tucks away that line of thought and refocuses on Rois. Nods. Watches his hands select the scalpel, and begin their work.

She's no stranger to death. Has witnessed her share of morbid sights, of all types. Seeing Mr Crocodile make that incision, peeling back the folds of fat and flesh to reach in and tear at Gilles’ viscera — it’s definitely up there, yet still, probably not quite the worst thing she’s witnessed. Even so. Watching how the corpse twitches and judders in response, hearing its organs and vasculature rip apart, seeing it all reduced down to this… the colour only drains further away from Osytha’s face.

Because the fact is, Syr Osytha has never quite gotten used to seeing death.

Some of the other Knights can look at a field of butchery and seem utterly unfazed by it. Not her. Seeing the macabre machinery of the body being broken down is unsettling enough. Then, if she looks too long at a corpse, if she wonders about it too hard, the thoughts only get more uncomfortable. Lots of ‘who were they’, ‘what kind of life would they have had’, ‘what was going through their mind as it happened’, ‘why did it have to end for them here’; that sort of thing. And the faces change, too. She starts to wonder how it’ll be when she’s looking down at Merifrith and Hroðgar like this, or which of the other syrs she’ll find waiting on the pyre. And, of course, the obvious one. The thing that everyone tries not to think about too hard, but which becomes disturbingly tangible when you gaze into a pair of dead eyes.

When will her own time come? To be reduced to this obscene ruin?

Queasy gaze follows the glistening rope of guts which Rois unreels down to the earth. A kind of rapt, fascinated dread in those wide blue eyes. They flicker back and forth with the motion of his hands, of the entrails, of the concentration furrowing Mr Crocodile’s face.

A cannibal, hauling cut-up human corpses in the night. A predator’s delighted eye watching her sweat. “I did not kill these people;” TAKE OS. A doting, bubbly young lass who shares… what, with herself? Feigned disgruntlement, chewing on a carrot like an ass. “Do not take me for a fool, bitch. I have been around your kind.”

Complicated.

“Perhaps I’m your enemy,” she says, softly, as the scene unfolds before her. “That’s fair, what with me stickin’ my nose in your business like this. Even though I don’t ken why you decided to take me back here, not if you’re truly intent on lettin’ me go at the end of it.”

Liver, floor. Kidneys, floor. She watches those, too; a great big wet, gelatinous mass, and two smaller, fat-wrapped yet tougher nuggets. Enigmatic marvels of anatomy, picking up a patina of grit where they look like they’re at risk of being trodden on.

“Thing is, I don’t yet know if you’re mine.” Lifts her gaze back up to the open cavity. Rois’ hands in deep under Gilles’ sternum, working at the lungs. “’Of the two of us, it’s lookin’ like I’m the only one who’s actually killed this eve. More’n that — even though I’m an enemy to you, you’re helpin’ me out right now, and takin’ a risk to do so. Don’t think that’s lost on me—”

A large, gory mass arcs through the air over Osytha. She jerks down instinctively, and whips her head around to watch one lobe of a lung squelch down by Guffers there. He’s also startled by the suddenness, but only momentarily, as that sniffer of his picks up a very interesting new scent. Forgotten is the allure of that bubbling broth. His nose snuffles down to the earth and up to the pale mass, laser-focused… seems to realise something and glances up to meet Osytha's stare. His own head hanging low and so guilty. She lets out a soft, short whistle, and boyo begins to slink reluctantly on over to her heels.

“Sorry, but the lad’s been trained to mind what he eats,” she informs Rois, facing him once more. “Mostly ’cos his tummy’s easily upset. But, also, ’cos I don’t need him makin’ off with people’s bits after a fight. It’s a bit awkward explainin’ that one away, as I’m sure you know.”

Guffy pads over by the knight’s feet and sits. Thumps his tail against her ankle a couple of times with uncertain hope as he gazes up. Osytha crouches down, sending him to squirm upon his back mounting excitement, and he happily receives her hands when they bestow upon him gentle affections.

“You’re honestly more wasteful than any butcher I’ve met,” she remarks to Rois. “Not keen on chitterlin’s? Pâté? Steak and kidney pie?”
 
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“If you had not come back here to at least see my intentions, would you have really believed me? That a cannibal butcher was such a thing, something that existed out in the open like this? No, you would have taken me for a liar. Thought I had forged the note, thought I was just another murderer trying to get away with the usual, but there is something you don’t understand.”

This kept happening. Moments lapping against the shore like a lazy tide, the gap between them would widen and the atmosphere would almost seem friendly, palatable, genuine, bereft of the terrible claws of horror despite the spillings of innards upon the table-- and then the gap would shorten again. Disaster would dance upon the edge of the encounter regardless of whether it fully reached its pinnacle or not, a stagnant threat turned lively, as if fate itself was flipping a coin over and over again expecting a different outcome every single time the shimmering piece became still upon their palm. This time… it was proximity. The table had relieved Osytha of the pressure of presence for a length of time, but the peace was shattered by the scraping of the cleavers tip dragged about its outskirts as Rois approached the lady knight in an almost stalking fashion.

This was the closest they had been yet.

Half-lidded eyes gaze sharply downwards in fractals of brilliant red encircling a pupil that was not quite round, but not as sharp as the splitting of a serpents eye. In the darkness there flits emotions too muddied to be parsed and yet somehow still so cold, back and forth, heat rolls over that smaller form in a manner so lovely, so fiery, a blight in the summer, a blessing in the frost-laden winters, back and forth, Rois’s voice is so unexpectedly gentle but Osytha’s breast bone is introduced to the blunt, rounded top of the cleaver as he pushes the woman back but a touch,

“You, and your horse, and your dog are still alive because I promised people here I would not kill anyone who did not attack me first.”

The path. The harsh words. The goading. He bats heavy lashes at her and spares the quietest smile.

“I am a man who keeps my word, I do not murder, but I am allowed to kill in self defence. It would have been so, so simple to snuff out your lives, and then maybe it’d be you upon this table now. I’d be throwing your clothes to the floor and deciding what parts of you are useful, and what parts of you aren’t… and I’d gladly take your dog and shove those unwanted parts down his throat until he choked to death upon your bones.”

Cruel eyes like shattered rubies sweep downwards to where Guffy was peering towards the two adults with the same cheerful demeanor Osytha’s hands had left him with. If the pup did not see himself to feast upon mankind’s mortal flesh then he would be made to, pinned down till his body creaked and his glassy eyes watered and stuffed with it in an explicit act of abuse that was just about tangible upon Rois’s face as a smattering of glee… the smoke flittering between horrid fangs causes the woman’s wayward locks to stir. He isn’t stupid. Telling the woman this and standing so purposefully close by (knowing she had almost been sexually assaulted) invited her to act-- what was to stop her from unsheathing her sword and taking it against his heart right there and then like she had done to her now butchered prey? It’d be so easy. Rois even kept his arms by his side as if to posture, I wont guard, I wont stop you, a chuckle rolls about in the depths of his throat as firelight causes the shadow of damp bandages to dance upon slick skin,

“You are more problematic to me alive… and that is the risk I am taking. Not the body parts, not the butchering, it’s you breathing that puts me and mine at risk; and that is why we are enemies.”

Complicated.

Back and forth.

The piercing gaze returns to the body.

With the main cavity now mostly empty save from the tangling of the heart and the circulatory system, Rois begins with the hand on the knights side, kisses the blade to the wrist and uses the keel of a palm to drive it straight through the scattered and thin connective tissue of the wrist joint with the white of bone exposed. Hands were never popular. Neither were the feet (of men specifically), wandering about her to the other end the butcher relieved the corpse all below the ankles with the repetitive sound of bones crunching filling the ominous silence that had settled between them in the wake of the confession; it only ended when the taller of the two had returned to his previous spot across from the block, and the crooked, curling fingers of Gilles had departed from the end of his slowly stiffening arm.

“... Truthfully, we have a lot of human in at the moment, so I only want what I know is going to sell.” A murmur and a glance at the bodies center, the scarcest touch of sadness in his voice. “Shame you ruined the heart. People always want to buy them.”

And it is like the threat had never happened. Like the playfulness of Feliene’s sprite-like flittering about them both and the atmosphere ever dancing at her heels had never happened. Like him trying to feed little Guffy out of some scrambled sense of flickering kindness hadn’t happened. A crocodile and a carrot. Casual and not casual. Dangerous and not dangerous. Promises and bluffing. The form of a man picking up a scalpel and beginning to gently draw lines upon the remaining flesh to outline said delicious cuts, a snaring of the upper arms, the ridges of the ribs, stretching over to begin lightly parsing how far down the thigh was viable… it would become crystal clear that Osytha was no prisoner, but nor was she entirely ‘free’, either. She had spent much of her time thinking, trying to make sense of the rabbit-hole so graciously stumbled into, but many had tried to parlay with Alice and parse the nonsensical innards of Wonderland just to fail time and time again.

This was Wonderland, where the game was people, the laws were unwritten and new, and things were complicated because he was the ever-shifting realm of madness itself, leant there keenly observing exposed muscle with learned concentration. She had no choice but to keep up. Lunacy often kept one on ones toes.

“... I’ll have to leave him alone for a few hours. Rigor mortis.” Rois spares her a lazy glance, “If I cut too much now he’ll become brittle.”
 
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