Quinque

Quinque called himself a Hunter of the Macabre, and work was aplenty in the Scarred Wasteland. When it wasn't, well, the Tangled Woods or Dragonhome always seemed to provide. He'd been through revived spirits, angry ghouls, and a few overly sarcastic so-called demons.

At this point he was pretty sure he'd seen it all. And if he hadn't, he probably wouldn't be surprised when he saw it.

Turns out he was wrong on both counts.

One got a lot more calls about Emperors than there ended up being actual Emperors in the whole Macabre Hunting business. Generally you could tell the prank jobs from those who genuinely believed they had an honest to the gods Emperor problem by how the customer reacted when they saw that the Hunter they'd called was a not-quite-friendly Imperial nursing some perpetual Macabre Hunting wounds himself. No one with any real concern would want to add fuel to the undead unholy chimera fire after all.

This particular client had ended up becoming quite resistant to his coming, which was enough to spur his interest. Nonetheless, a genuine believer did not a real monster make, and Quinque had never managed to meet an Emperor in all of his very long career.

So he started the job with pleasantly disappointing expectations. Quinque had packed his herbs, practiced a few moves in case the situation got physical, and ran through some of the handier rituals for handling wayward macabre beasts in his head. He set off towards the job site in Greatwyrm's Breach expecting a hoax, or a beast and too many nervous locals.

Clambering through the caverns just slightly too small to be comfortable to a fully grown Imperial, his expectations had been adjusted to: a strange beast, almost definitely injured, possibly already dying. Not the most demanding of jobs, but hopefully the local Clans would still pay out when he dragged its dead but-not-Emperor-dead body to them as proof.

He'd picked up the scent of rotting flesh a little while ago, and was now tracking it down deep into the tunnels. He was gaining on it now, hearing the rising sound of rasping breaths paired with thumping footsteps and an odd dragging sound.

In the gloom of barely there light, he could make out the strange shape of the beast that was facing away from him. He could sort of see why the locals had called it an Emperor. There was a distinct Imperial-like shape to it, as well as to its movements.

But it was clearly no Emperor, at least, no Emperor from any stories he'd ever heard. For one, the whole of the beast was smaller than Quinque himself, and second, there was no menacing, overpowering aura of malignant combining elemental energies.

In fact, there was only a faint magical energy to be felt from the beast. It was also making a strange murmuring, whimpering noise. As he stepped forward, he began to cast Drown, trying to decide whether he should take the body of the beast back to the local Clans for payment or add it to his own collection for study.

Then he got a clear look at the wretched thing in the light of his half-cast spell.

The spell died and sent the briefly illuminated tunnel into darkness again.

Quinque could definitely still be surprised.

The blue glow had revealed one strange creature, with a few too many limbs to be natural. The motley parts of the beast were putrefying, the many legs, tails, and wings draped lifelessly from the body to the floor. Colors had been difficult to discern in the brief blue light, but the patterns had been mismatched and disjointed, not to mention discolored from decay. The scent of rot emanated from the beast, and filled the tunnel with unmitigated stench.

At the burst of sudden light, it had gone silent and stopped moving, swaying and juddering minutely in place.

Quinque gathered himself and cast Bolster. The shield shimmered into place, giving him additional defenses in case the beast attacked. More importantly, the spell illuminated the tunnel with a steady golden light.

The beast had turned to face him, and as its front swung into view, he backed away in shock.

Not only did the beast have extra limbs, it had extra heads. However, the most disturbing revelation of all was that the beast was no mere animal, form in the mimicry of a dragon; it had the heads of Imperials.

He could count at least four Imperial heads, all lifeless and rotting – dull eyes staring blankly, heads hanging on limp necks from the body. On closer inspection he could see where the disparate parts of the creature had been joined. They weren’t bound together organically, or through magic, they had bean coarsely sewn together.

This was no conjured creature or illusion, Quinque realized. With his long experience, he could tell that these were genuine carcasses of Imperials. Still young, given their sizes, put together by some twisted being, and made to walk again.

Quinque had not been horrified in a very long time. He had not been this angry in longer. He would put the miserable thing out of its suffering, find the utter monster that had created it, and wreak justice upon them with the righteous fury of the gods whose natural order had been so terribly wronged.

He raised a claw and gathered Breath for a massive, killing Slash. Then one of the heads lifted, and he was left staring into a wide, piteous, desolate brown gaze.

The Imperial fawn was still alive, but just barely. Quinque realized with a start that they must be the main body to which the other body parts were attached. They were so ill with blood poisoning and necrosis that they looked as dead as the corpses appended to them. Their face was so deteriorated that Quinque could not tell their sex, nor their original colors or markings.

He strode forward, clasped their head gently in one hand and lifted it to look them in the eyes.

“What happened to you? Who did this to you!?” he said, hoarse with horror and rage.

They continued staring, wide-eyed, breath whistling in and out of its hung open mouth. Then their strange whimpering murmur restarted. Fractured syllables, in a pleading tone, were pushed out desperately in a chant.

Quinque stood there quietly in the dimming light. Focused on trying to piece together what they were begging for. Slowly, he realized they were names, repeated mournfully, imploringly.

“Who are they?”

They whimpered again.

….fam….ily……....
forev….er…..sp….osed....
….to….gether…..for….ever…
…..gone……….gone…….gone……..alone…..

Understanding dawned slowly, like a stalagmite built by drops of water over a millennia, and it brought a foreboding chill deep into his gut. None of the extraneous limbs were attached in any place an Imperial could not reach on himself. The rough, unpracticed stitching. The paramountcy of Kin in Dragonhome.

This dragon, barely an adult, not much more than a child, had so desperately wanted to be with their deceased family that they had made a desperate and horrifying attempt to invoke the magical fusion that would give rise to an Emperor.

He let go of their face, and stepped away, cold quenching the remnants of his earlier anger.

The dying Imperial made a distressed noise, head held up now, eyes still searching Quinque’s face for a familiarity that they would not find.

Their breath quickened, leaning and stumbling forward, glazed eyes fervently seeking his for recognition, affection. They gasped and wheezed, the exertion of reaching out towards a recognizably Imperial face too much for their weak, expiring frame. They slowly collapsed to the floor, shuddering on weak limbs.

Their rattling breath grew shallower and shallower, each breath out still shaping a name.

Bolster faded away, and with it its glowing light.

Silence enveloped the tunnel.

"Sleep soundly here and forever with your loved ones, with whom you will never again be parted."

He'd never seen a death more pitiful.