Temptation of the Zombie Butterfly 4

'Temptation of the Zombie Butterfly' is a Short Narrative is 7 Sections numbered 0 through 6. The Narrative is now complete and all are available on this website under my portfolio (Prof. Harbinger). Enjoy!

Camel Spine Mountains, Second month of the Monsoon, 314 APW (After the Precursor War)

Two men stood on a balcony that had listed to an awkward angle centuries ago. The men appeared to have listed to awkward angles themselves. They both held heads in hands and appeared to have minimal interest in keeping any sort of a watch. They wore red armor built of water hardened leather plates and leather sandals, but little else besides their loincloths. Cyri slid the spear from her back and unhooked her banner, snapping the clasps of her banner to her belt. She crouched on the lip of a stone balcony just above the two men. She tensed and then uncoiled into a springing pounce that brought her slamming down upon the first man- spear point driving through his clavicle into his chest cavity. He spat blood as the spear found his lung. Cyri let go at that point leaving the man to flounder and drown as his lung filled up.

She turned her attention to the other man, who had turned and had already begun screaming an alarm call as he scurried into the safety of the cavern rather than face Cyri. She drew a forearm length throwing dart from a leg harness and flung it under hand into the man's back. The weighted tip popped through the front of his torso between two ribs and he spun in a dainty little spiral before collapsing and sliding downward across the angled floor. Neither man had died yet, but neither would either be attacking her from behind, and so she left them.

She drew forth two more darts, holding one in each hand. Three more of the Forgotten Dead climbed through a crumbling doorway into the room. Cyri dispatched two with her darts, thrown cleanly through each man's sternum.

The third was just registering the demise of his comrades as Cyri slammed the blunt head of her tomahawk into his nose, collapsing the bones there and spraying blood and mucus across his leather tunic. The force of the blow tipped the man backward. Cyri also took a step back to gain range, and then brought the tomahawk's head chopping down bury itself in the man's face. The head of the tomahawk splitting the skull down the middle and cleaving the already damaged nose into two ruined pieces as weapon passed through the nose to enter the skull and brain.

The body hit the ground and Cyri planted a foot on the body's shoulder and wrenched the tomahawk from the skull.

"The Cinder boy was right, withdrawal and animal instincts.”She whispered to herself as she yanked darts from the cooling corpses, ”Not like that makes a hunt harder though. Three done. Let's find a few more."

She noted a whisper of a smell, smoke on the wind: incense. The rain made detection difficult. The smell might indicate Seraphim, or it might indicate that the gangers used incense to make their drug use palatable.

Cyri didn't hold much hope for the latter being relevant. If she was smelling incense, the chances were good that it was because Seraphim wanted her to smell incense. The four hunters deliberately used sound and smell to aim their prey. They could be practically undetectable should they choose, and their affectations were all strategy- designed to give false hope or drive prey along a desired flight path. In any case, none of this mattered to Cyri for a moment. She shrugged the thoughts aside, to be addressed when her promise of vengeance was fulfiled.

She found three more men sleeping in piles of filthy rags and killed them silently with her skinning knife before continuing on. In the kitchen she put a dart through the skull of a man who had apparently been attempting to drink away his withdrawal symptoms. The kitchen however, provided no food that wasn't spoiled or high proof home brewed alcohol. Cyri had no intention of trying to obtain nutrition from liquor on an empty stomach, and so she pressed on. She was slipping up behind a large over muscled man holding a bowl with some sort of powder when somebody coughed loudly behind her. The man spun around, chainmail jangling and Cyri swung her tomahawk in a hasty chopping strike.

"She sent you! Didn't she?" The man growled as he clumsily blocked Cyri blow with a handmade machete.

“What?” Cyri asked as she regained her guard.

"Not enough to cut us off, take her butterflies back. Not enough to leave us to suffer without the butterfly insight. No, no, no. She had to send an assassin for vengeance against our revenge."

Cyri kicked her shin into the man's nethers and he dropped to the ground with another growl, dropping the blade. The man pushed himself into a backward roll and came up on his feet in the back room of the cavern. The room had two entrances, the door the man had just used and a large window looking out into the grey sky and pouring rain. He showed more skill and presence of mind than the others. And he had nearly two hundred pounds of muscle over Cyri. He was clearly suffering the withdrawal symptoms, but a lucky blow- especially with a bludgeon in hand would still put Cyri in the Great Serpent’s realm with no trouble. She paused.

"You're the last one, you know," Cyri said, blocking the door through which she'd entered, "You can deal with me, or you can go out the window. You might survive the fall. I don't relish the idea of dying by exposure in the monsoon. But it's your choice.

"What do you want?" The man said.

“Answers.”

"You're going to kill me when you're done right?"

"I am, but it will be quick and it will end the pain." Cyri answered.

"That's a handful of salt for comfort." The man said.

"You can jump," Cyri answered, "If you think it's a better offer."

The man shook his head, "Ask your questions."

“The woman whose farm you destroyed, she was your supplier- for your apothecary drug?”

He nodded, “My turn. She did send you after us, didn’t she?”

Cyria considered not answering, but eventually nodded, "And the woman who sold you the zombie butterfly, you destroyed her farm. You did this in revenge, after she cut you off- wouldn't sell you the butterfly any longer. What happened?"

"We had an arrangement. We'd raid other farmsteads around her. She'd keep seeds and garden stuff. We'd get food and livestock. And she'd give us Zombie Butterfly. Some for us and some we'd sell. But people started putting the pieces together.”

“Oh? What do you mean by that?”

“People started figuring out hints that might tell them where the butterfly came from, or who cooked it. She didn't want that. So she cut us off, started rumors that sent people our way and kept her in the shadows.”

“You didn’t like that I imagine,” Cyri said.

“She was using us as altar goats! Sacrifice us to keep her hands clean. So we said, fair's fair. If she weren't going to play fair, we weren't going to play fair either.”

“And that’s when you took your vengeance?”

“That’s when we took her down. She weren't there, I don't know how she knew, but she must have. Didn't warn nobody else though.”

Cyri tilted her head, “Explain.”

“She had three husbands, they died defending her five kids. Died well. They were warriors- like you, like me. So that's why. Now I've told you. Hand me my chopper, it's time you killed me."

Cyri chuckled quietly and kicked the machete to the man. He picked up the blade and, stumbling only a little, charged her with a wordless war cry. Cyri dodged his feinted first blow and rammed a knee into his gut, and then slammed the top of her tomahawk into his jaw. She dropped the tomahawk and the man struggled to reposition. She reached back and pulled a hooked dagger with a hollow pommel from her belt and rammed it into the man's torso puncturing the chainmail rings, curling the strange blade into a lung by driving it through the stomach and diaphragm. Blood spilled out the hollow pommel, draining through a hole in the equally hollow blade. Cyri hated cleaning the blade, but it was a nasty end to any argument.

She leaped backwards, out of range of any dying blow. The huge man stumbled, his eyes rolled back in his head, and crashed heavily to the ground and slid until his now lifeless body came to rest in a crooked corner.

As she caught her breath, she heard clapping. Cyri turned and saw Seraphim and the Dragon Man blocking the door. Looking to the window she found Cinnamon coiling through the opening as the Bone Man stopped behind her crouching to block the way.

"What happened to the Cinder Scales?" She asked.

"We showed them your mother's gratitude," Cinnamon answered.

"You didn't kill my cassowary did you? I have to return it to its owner."

"Killing a beast of burden holds no interest to us, " the Dragon Man said.

"So young protege," Seraphim said, "What shall we do now?"

"Actually," Cyri said pointing at the discarded bowl containing the powdery residue, "I was hoping Cinnamon would give me her expert opinion on the contents of that dish."

The four exchanged surprised looks, and then Cinnamon stepped forward.