Once stripped of his robes, the jailer's headless body appeared disturbingly… human. I knew from our earlier fight that this creature wasn't.
Curious, I pulled out and tapped the torch, greatly increasing the amount of light in the room.
The pale skin stretched tightly over grayish veins. The veins seemed rigid and stiff to my probing fingers. Clusters of pustules were scattered about, oozing a greasy, stringy, clear fluid with ashy black clumps mixed in. The substance wasn't blood or any other bodily fluid I could think of, and it made me want to wash my hands. Robes easily concealed these differences.
Then, there was the creature's tarry black blood. The stuff smelled of earthy decay, like an old compost pile recently churned. My body gagged at the smell, and I recalled the horrid taste we had desperately tried scraping out of our mouths. No… it wasn't just a memory. The scent was infecting my tongue with that taste. How could anything taste so bad?
The smell, the taste reminded me of…
A young girl with big-rimmed glasses and long brown braids on each side of her head. I had liked her because she was my age and she liked to play games. We had caught a bunch of monarch butterflies by the pond, and then she had dared me to eat them. I had gotten so sick while she had laughed and laughed. I never liked her after that.
The memory abruptly stopped. I couldn't quite get it to connect to the creature before me. Was it because monarchs looked like another type of butterfly that wasn't poisonous? Was this creature a Monarch-human?
Hadn't a series of puzzle games featured something like that? A mothman? Mothmen? They were depicted as winged humanoids with hypnotic moth-like eyes that traveled from town to town like locusts, causing disasters that killed dozens or hundreds… for no apparent reason. I couldn't remember how the game ended.
Another game series in the distant future had these large bug monsters that popped out of people's chests. Was this an ambulatory egg sac or a mobile monster cocoon shaped like a human? Was this creature a predator that blended in with its prey, sort of like a preying hu-mantis?
It didn't seem to fit.
I took the cleaver and cut into it. I wanted to know. My body didn't. It just wanted to get away from it. My need to know somehow prevailed.
I wasn't good at using the tiny cleaver or figuring out what was normal and what wasn't. The long, stringy black strands inside those gray veins didn't seem right. The rib bones look thick with knots. The organs seemed small, black… I gave up quickly, my body repelled by the overwhelming smell. It had gotten worse. Both my body and I were gagging from the taste. We couldn't stand to be around it…
But… We needed access to clean water.
I took the remains back to the hole I had come from and dropped them into the darkness. On my way back to the kitchen, I stopped in the barracks. How long before the spider corpses started to stink? I didn't want to find out. I picked up one of the few undamaged tables and used it to bulldoze the crushed spiders into a pile, which I then pushed down the hole, too.
Only afterward, while following the long trail of gore back to the barracks, did I realize what a horrible idea it had been. When the cleaning crew next returned, they'd see the long trail over their otherwise clean floors. I had put myself on a timer and didn't know the deadline.
Tired of the gore and the smell, I scrubbed myself raw again, trying to get rid of the smell and the memory of the taste.
My mind turned back to the mystery of the jailer. What had it been? Was it some sort of intelligent zombie able to shrug off any amount of damage? A lesser vampire that chose to live down here in the darkness? I didn't know. I didn't have the answers. I had only learned it was something long dead pretending to be alive, but I didn't know specifically, especially without looking at the head, which I no longer had any desire to do.
Perhaps there were more clues in its belongings? The numerous pockets contained two money pouches, one with 22 copper coins and the other containing 10 silver coins, a used cork for a wine bottle, an onion, a ring, a pocketbook full of tiny portraits, and a keyring with three rings.
Deciding that the robe might be turned into a passable tunic, I rinsed and wrung it out repeatedly. In the process, I found a pair of double pockets in the sleeve with a two-headed copper coin and a pair of bone dice.
It's too bad I didn't have a way to track all the items… or maybe I did? It's not like I tried to do much beyond checking his status screen.
"Inventory!"
A pop-up window showed the outline of my body on one side and a list of locations on the other. My body showed a 'Crude Backpack' in the back slot. Only one item was listed in the list of locations.
Crude Backpack: everburning torch, stainless steel whisk, large iron pot, small steel pot, medium meat cleaver, two wool blankets.
I tried accessing the items through my inventory screen, hoping they would teleport directly from my backpack to my hand. It didn't work, leaving me feeling like a noob. I guess I'd have to take them out and put them back in the old-fashioned way. It was the most useless inventory system I'd ever seen. If I was going to be stuck in an awful game, did it have to be an Alpha playtest still awaiting updates?
I closed my inventory.
I picked up the book again.
The book's inscription read, "The girls and I just wanted to remind you what you're missing. -Don" It was filled with miniature paintings, many signed, of half-dressed or naked women posing to display their, um, features. Many of the women had animal ears, tails, and claws. One very voluptuous bunny-eared woman even had whiskers. A quick flip through the book had my cheeks hot and my… um… body… um… I didn't want to think about it.
I put the book down and checked my surroundings.
No new monsters, no new rats, and no new fish in the sink.
I came back to the sink and drank some water.
I felt… cold and a little embarrassed.
I looked at the wet robes. After a thorough ringing and shaking, I tried them on. They were too small. After slicing the seams along the sides and lengthening the neck, I tried them on. The arms were uncomfortably narrow at the shoulders and covered only half his forearms, so I tore them off. What I had left was a poor excuse for a tunic. It still did a passable job of concealing his delicate bits.
I pocketed the pouches of coins, cork, two-headed coin, bone dice, ring, and keyring.
Why had the monster carried around an onion? Was it something it ate? We sniffed at it, smelling earth near the roots with no traditional eye-watering aroma. My body didn't identify it as food. Had the undead creature been a gardener? Was it some odd custom? Wondering if I'd ever find out, I put the onion in my backpack.
I eyed the book, considering leaving it behind. I hated to, but not for the most apparent reason. It didn't just show pictures of nude women; it showed a vast world of races that he had never seen before. Before I had flipped through its pages, I had only seen humans, whatever the jailer was, and my fellow cage dwellers, who I assumed were the same race as me.
I picked the book up and flipped through it again. There were humans, of course, but there was also a pointy-eared thin woman who might have been an elf, a cat-woman, several dog-women with droopy ears, the bunny-woman, a muscular short woman that might have been a dwarf or a thick short bodybuilder, a bushy-tailed squirrel-woman, and more. I took a blanket out, unfolded it, wrapped the book in it, and tucked it into our backpack.
On a whim, I said "Inventory" again.
The window appeared again, with the outline of my body on one side and a list of locations on the other. My body showed 'Crude Tabard' in his chest slot and 'Crude Backpack' in his back slot. The list of locations now had five items.
Crude Tabard: Copper Money Pouch, Silver Money Pouch, wine cork, Cheater's Coin, bone dice, Connie's Wedding Band, Jailer's Keyring.
Crude Backpack: Everburning torch, stainless steel whisk, large iron pot, small steel pot, medium meat cleaver, wool blanket, onion, Wool Blanket (container).
Copper Money Pouch: 22 copper coins.
Silver Money Pouch: 10 silver coins.
Wool Blanket: Don's Directory (signed).
I focused on the Cheater's Coin.
They are made by slicing the faces off two coins and rejoining them using metalworking techniques. They are then sold in pairs with coins made from the other sides. They are most commonly used during sleight-of-hand performances.
I closed that window and focused on Connie's Wedding Band.
Connie's Wedding Band: This quest item was given to Sir Timmons Breckwood by his wife, Connie Breckwood, on their wedding night.
Quests! I could do quests!