RP:The Butcher of Cenril - a priest's flesh for a wizard's request
Background
The butcher Valentin had received a special request from a strange wizard.
Valentin combines the wizards' order with his own vendetta against the Archbishop of Cenril.
Setting
It was still an hour from Matins. Drunkards were collapsing, hard workers were rising, the docks were loud, the harbour louder, and the streets quiet. Around the city, priests and monks rose from their cots to don robes and stoles and start their day with a prayer. And elsewhere, the Butcher of Cenril prepared to fill a special order.
Procurement can be a bloody nuisance
Valentin examined the new meatcart again in the dark of the early morning, and grunted. Resembling little more than a wagon with a large metallic box instead of the normal open-topped wooden tray, the meatcart's sides had 'Valentin's Butcher Shop and Charcuterie' etched into the very alloys. The tricky bit had been the hidden topside compartment, and getting the runes and ritual lines engraved on the inside of the 'icebox' properly aligned to keep the flow of cryumbral tides smooth and controlled. Although it could use refining down the tracks, it worked. A small animal bound into the powerwell would keep the sorceries running for a couple of days. A full-grown man could keep the enchantments running strong for a week. And the meatcart, well, it was the perfect cover for what the butcher needed to do. For Valentin had an insane wizard's coin in his vault, and procuring the wizard's goods was a task which would combine well with the butcher's personal desire to cull some more clergy from the herd.
Half an hour later, Valentin's meatcart trundled through the streets of Cenril, pulled by a pair of bad-tempered ponies, until the butcher found a nice dark side street to park it in. There was a priest, Valentin had discovered, who passed this area each morning on the way to the Cathedral for the Matins prayers and choir practice - a tenor of fair voice, one lady buying a lamb roast had described him. Amazing what a man could learn through idle gossip with his customers. Some of those little old ladies could talk a man to his grave - and probably had, the way they came into the shop without a man to carry the goods back. That, or their men had fallen to Preklek or pirate, which was just as likely. Valentin liked the quiet, dark hours of the morning. No jibber-jabber of worthless people to aggravate him, no pretension or fine airs. Just the stones beneath him, the black sky above him, and the shadows around him. Some men became captivated by the ocean, and its vastness, and sought familiarity with it aboard boat and ship. Valentin felt the same for shadows and their ubiquitous presence. While he'd never as a child planned to become a necromancer, the shadows had called Valentin to their craft unerringly in the form of his twisted, yet perceptive, sire. In the quiet introspection brought about by the dark and solitude, Valentin almost missed the sound of footsteps. Almost.
Valentin focused his will on his own umbral tides, and his shadow sprouted a trio of tendrilous eyestalks which shot off down the sidestreet, up the cracks of the building walls, and into the main thoroughfare. It took a moment for Valentin to collate the cracked-mirror kaleidoscope of visual data the three shadow-eyes fed back to him, the grey haze and triple-images a guaranteed migraine to one who hadn't practiced this art for decades as Valentin had in the blackstone keep of his sire. But for Valentin, the eyes served their purpose admirably, and the priest was located shuffling down the street in a comparatively carefree fashion. Complacent, perhaps - but only Valentin had made a point of challenging the priesthood directly, and the butcher had barely begun his campaign. Releasing the shadowbindings, the butcher caused the eyes to return to shadow, and dismounted from the meatcart. With unhurried pace, Valentin tromped towards the exit of the sidestreet, causing himself to be wreathed in shadows with every step, until he paused at the corner, indistinguishable from the shadows played out from a pile of refuse. The timing, as always, would have to be perfect.
Valentin caused his shadow to spill out beneath him, and in his mind's eye pictured the ritual circle he would require. It was time, Valentin felt, to try for an unadulterated version of Vandon LeRouge's Crimson Chains. But the real challenge to his mastery of this particular ritual would be using his shadows and the pyrumbral tides to create the circle in an instant. He'd practiced, aye, how he had practiced. There was a section in the Vailkrin necropolis where the ground had been scorched black from his numerous attempts. He had it down well enough... but to set it up so as to capture a moving target, even an old priest confident in his divine good fortune, would prove a daunting task. The priest shuffled on, humming beneath his breath a favourite hymn. Valentin... concentrated. And the butcher's shadows lengthened, twisted, slithered across the cobblestones, gathering behind the priest, out of his line of sight.
Valentin narrowed his gaze, and considered the timing. The moment he began chanting, the priest would be on his guard - but that moment of shocked or watchful stillness on the priest's behalf could prove decisive. Most people, Valentin found, had a tendency to go very still at the first sense of danger while they thought the situation through. It was only when a real and physical threat was presented that their tendency to run or fight kicked in. It was the wisdom of owls to announce their arrival with banshee wail, and see their prey immobilised in fear and indecision before the predatory bird descended on wraithlike wings to wrap talons around its prey. Aye, Valentin saw as owls did, and summoned the silent whispers, ethereal echoes of a voice intruding upon the air surrounding the priest in a subtle dissonant chorus of cracked sibillants. This cantatus bound his shadows with the pyrumbral tides as the ground around the priest becomes a mural of flickering, flamelike shadows. Sigils and runes became apparent, and as the priest's initial shock from the sudden assault of sound wore off, the ground around him had a ritual circle scorched into it. As the necromancer's cantatus comes to its conclusion, the priest raises his arms and brings his palms together as he begins focusing his own will in the form of prayer. In that moment Valentin scythes a tendril of shadow across the priest's arms - a weak blow, given the existing drain on Valentin's reserves from the other shadowbindings, but while the cut barely sliced through the priest's skin, a smattering of blood dropped to the ground, and the ritual circle was activated.
As Valentin released his own spells, his shadow bindings fading into simple shadow, the sigils scorched onto Cenril's road around the priest glowed a murky brownish-red, and the blood lining the priests wrists flared bright crimson. And the priest... screamed. Valentin cursed under his breath. None of the texts had mentioned what level of pain the damned shackles would inflict, merely mentioning how effective they were at keeping enemies subdued. Then again, the butcher should have realised that if the damn spell had been designed to keep them silent, then the marginalia would have probably said so. Wait, the blimmin' footnotes had mentioned a gag as a common accoutrement to the ritual. Valentin accompanied his self-recrimination with several swift steps and a solid fist to the side of the priest's head. The savage thump contrived to both drop and silence the priest. With a growl and hiss of necromantic syllables, Valentin's shadow swept over the ritual circle, scorching away the finer details and erasing the circle in an expanse of soot and burning dust. Wreathed as he was in shadow, Valentin remained unworried about being recognised - but even so, he hauled the limp priest away just as the sound of window shutters opening rattled at various points around the street.
Valentin opened the meatcart's doors, and hurled the unconscious priest in with a snarl. The butcher was annoyed with himself, for having failed to test the spell in a more appropriate and controlled situation and almost ruining his hunt. Certainly, his recklessness had spoiled an opportunity to properly observe the ritual's effects. Valentin decided not to bother finding a second clergyman. Instead, he'd find one of the many drunkards or homeless curled up in the dark corners of Cenril to make up the required quantity of meat for the damned wizard. By the time Valentin returned to his shop, he had three unconscious men lying in his meatcart, and some actual butcher's work to do in the coldroom below.