DIRTY MANGY DOG

he opens up the bag with the roasted ducks, tosses a couple at the dogs, which swarm around the birds immediately, tails wagging so hard they may start a tornado at any moment. he takes the third duck with both hands, and takes a bite out of the breast of it, chewing without much politeness but with plenty of pleasure. He rips off one of the legs, and approaches to shove it into the visor as he did with the squirrel early. "try this. s so fuckin good right? right?? different than just roasted over a fire! proper cookin'! god damn!" then, as if answering the last question, he just opens up one of the barrels using a big dagger like a crowbar, and drinks from it by practically dunking his mouth into the dark wine. then he goes, "HAAAAAAH, THAT'S GOOD. THAT'S FUCKIN' GOOD!"

"most dogs dont drink wine but ah do, cus wine's delicious, 'n this is good fuckin' wine!" he sits down on a closed barrel and keeps eating the duck. Big bites, ripping apart chunks of meat and dragging his teeth over the bones to get every last piece of meat he can get. He does eat like a dog. "im jus gonna hide it in a cave n whenever i want wine im gonna go there. s easy. i mostly steal it from like, soldier camps. but s easier to just buy stuff, aye. dont care much for money, but it does buy nice food somtimes, better than eatin' squirrels 'n corpses''

"aye, monks are weak as hell, you can just break 'em easy, just pull 'n twist-" and he does the same thing with the second wing- a pull of the joint, then a twist of the wrist, dislocation. he shoves it in his mouth and eats it. a few chews, then a swallow. he licks his teeth. "bad. cus i was starvin'. i woke up 'n i saw my own dead body besides me, and i was mad with hunger. dogs brought me birds and squirrels sometimes. sometimes rats. but i grabbed at the stiff body of me 'n bit down what i could bite down. i was too thin 'nyways. tasted like... all meat. yknow." he finally finishes the duck. he tosses the bones down, then looks at them. a little eyebrow raise, then a look over at the armored creature besides him. "what's your deal, sellsword? what are ye?"

"gamblin'! that's how ya got all that gold, then? gamblin' 'n winning? audentis fortuna iuvat, somethin' somethin'. never had proper luck mahself, don't like gamblin' unless i can end it in a duel." he gets off the barrel of wine to go dunk his mouth in the open barrel again, lapping at it like a dog. here's one who's true to his nature. "so you ain't got skin 'n yer full of bugs. i ain't ever heard of nothin' like that. got a couple friends, one of em makes undyin' rats full of mushrooms. he talks to the mushrooms 'n stuff. he says they take over the dead n make em better. but never heard of no damn bug. the world's full a wonders, ain't it"

"pays well to be a mercenary, then. how nice." he gets lost in thought for a moment. he's thinking about someone. it doesn't last long. he takes another gulp of wine, cleaning his mouth with the back of his hand again. "friends. dogs need packs. i have mine. but 's different than mercenary work. roots... made out of blood. hunger's better shared." his eyes are odd. he himself is odd. aside from the first smile, which was more of a practiced imitation of what he had seen before, he doesn't really emote much, and his voice is flat, completely even, as if he was a corpse that had recently re-learned to speak. indeed, not a human. indeed, maybe more alike to each other. he looks at the way the gauntlet pulls at the grass. "do you not drink, brother?"

"ah see. so you ain't taken a liking to sedation." he sits down on the grass, now. his dogs come over, sniffing his hands and his clothes. he reaches up to take the fourth duck, ripping a leg off and giving the rest to the dogs. as he eats, duck leg in one hand, the other one mindlessly pets the head of whatever dog's closer. they seem content. "see, stranger, why don't ya buy yerself a house or somethin'? you've got enough gold to buy yourself a title 'n a tiny plot ah land, don't ya? you don't seem like the type to enjoy wanderin'. you look exhausted, ya move tired. but i can't blame ya. dyin' is tiresome, indeed.''

he pulls at some tall stalk, cutting it with his nail and this thumb, and bites off the little undeveloped head of chaff, spitting it away. he passes the straw over to Helm, twirling it between his fingers. "wild dog. aye. stray dog. free dog. don't need a house nor a title nor nothin'. i'm free as free can be. not a slave to no one, not even the gods up above. i do as i want whenever i please. i eat, i drink, i fuck, i kill. 's a good life. gold buys you roasted duck, but not freedom, aye?"

"Wild dog. Wish I could be a stray. I like being fed from a master's hand too much, though." (It takes the the straw and sticks it into its eye slit. Ow. It crooks its knees and folds its legs. After a moment of consideration, it sticks its hands behind its helmet.) "I tried takin over the castle a short while ago. Didn't work. If it did, I would've had a title and land, I guess. D'you still want that three gold?"

"you ain't a person if you don't wanna be a person. bein' a person is too much work. 's all actin' pretend 'n takin' the joke of sapience too far. we are the gods' most annoyin' mistakes." a scoff. he closes his eyes, feeling the soft fur of Cat Gutter's head and back. He sighs through his nose like an old dog, and another dog follows suit. "if ya stop followin' those rules, then ya go back to not-person. children, madmen, cripples, foreigners. if ya upset the theatre of humanity, ya get kicked out of the play. don't play along with them rules, brother, unless yer gonna get some sorta benefit from it." "yeah, would be nice. make sure ya send good fighters. i like duelin'. feels good to steal shit from someone tryin' to kill ya."

he lifts up a finger. "people are dead. they respect the dead a lot more than they respect the livin' at times. that's why there's... songs 'n poems about cocksuckers 'n their lineages n whatever the hell they did while alive... then they die 'n they make 'em saints. but yeah, the looks affect a lot of it, huh?" he takes a blade of grass, plucking it between his fingers, watching it come undone as he toys with it. "you don't remember bein' alive?"

a laugh. it's weird. more of a snort and an animalistic sound of amusement than a proper laugh. it's honest, at least. a bit like a hyena, if either of these dudes knew what hyenas sound like. "right." he moves his head to look over at the dead thing besides him, and he hums while looking over it. "definitely's old. you stuck in there?"

"Stuck in the armor? No. Just hurts to take it off." (As if to prove the point, it adjusts itself so its hands are in the air, and it starts peeling off the left gauntlet. Blood drips down its vambraces. Nice laugh.) "Since I am, uh, fused. Sort of. I guess you don't have that problem?"

oh, huh. sniff sniff. that's a nice smell. blood under armor. but there's that pungency of rot to it, huh. guess they're different in that way. "nah. i just get hungry. i guess the body runs out of blood while healin', so i gotta make more. 'n i get hungry. 'n there's the convulsions, too. i ain't fond of them. but guess i gotta be thankful i can keep my skin. it just scars bad." "so yer stuck in there, like a mollusk. guess that's just how it is, huh? at least yer always protected with that armor, then. like... a beetle... a hard-shelled animal."

"I don't run outta blood ever." (It tosses the gauntlet into the air, then mutters curses when the thing lands on its visor and knocks the partly chewed straw fully into its helmet. It sits up and sticks the skinned hand into the metal to try and retrieve the plant.) "An I get hungry but I don't haveta eat ever. Can you regrow limbs? That might be a bug thing. That's, uh, heh. Two bug things I guess I have. With the shell."

he laughs again, with his odd animal laugh, at the gauntlet incident and the following rummaging in its own visor. ''you dont gotta eat? lucky, then you don't gotta spend so much time lookin' for food, huh? but bein' hungry sucks. you got any way to satisfy the hunger?" ...he thinks about it. "aye, i can regrow limbs. takes me a while, though. 's better if i can just reattach it. gotta hold it a while, though. ya must be some sorta crab. or a metal lobster. man-sized metal lobster. would be a nice beast to draw on the margins of a prayer book."

"I can still eat, mutt." (It mutters, embarrassed.) "You fed me that squirrel and duck leg earlier. An I am capable of removin my visor. I eat people an animals sometimes. I just spent most of a century not eatin. You gotta nice laugh. Do you think it's from your larynx? If I took it would you regrow it?"

"yeah but ya don't die from not eatin', right? starvation sucks. it eats your brain 'n your body 'n leaves you rottin' before you die for real. consider yerself lucky, if hunger won't kill you. then it ain't no different from an itch to scratch nstead of a need." scratch, scratch. he scratches at his own chin, then hums while pressing two fingers to his larynx. "yeah. i've had my head cut off. took me a bit to speak, but ah can do it. why? you wanna open up my throat?"

"Yeah." (It twists around to stare at him, pulling its hand out of its helmet. It's hungry.) "How much can you regrow? I'm hungry. Think it would be interesting if we swapped throats."

a weird smile crawls up on his face. there's a sickening curiosity brewing now; he's the kind of man that likes taking things as far as possible. and when you can't die, then, everything's a ''why the hell not". this is new. "i 'unno. but i won't die. guess i gotta repay yer kindness somehow, eh? go right ahead. i'm dyin' to know too."

"Yeah yeah yeah give me a minute." (It starts pulling on its visor. Undo the latches, pull off the leather, unscrew the bolts. Peel the metal away from the skull, drip blood onto its cuirass. Ow ow ow. Set the plate aside, check his face for a reaction.)

his face remains neutral, almost bored. when the peeling of the visor is done, however, he does raise his eyebrows ever so slightly. he sits up, sniffing at it. sniff sniff. a couple of dogs join, too, but he growls at them, and they back off. "no wonder ya smelled so good. reminds me of skinned venison." he licks at the blood seeping through the muscle tissue of its cheek, underneath the pale lines of where the cheekbone is. a tongue click, as if tasting wine. "interestin'. i've never met nothin' like ye. i've seen undead a bit like this, keepin' their wounds, more skinned or burnt flesh than man, but not as lucid."

''like all meat does. like a dead thing.'' a tilt of the head. like a confused dog. he turns his head to look at his dogs, and does a few chittering, bark-like noises. ears perk up, and each dog leaves their own way, some leaving together, some leaving for the forest on their own. they probably get mad when they see him get hurt. safer without 'em around. "what'cha doin'?"

"Gotta remove the larynx to switch them, don't-" (Its voice gets garbled as the muscle parts for its fingers. Its eyes stay fixed on him. Blood drips down down down, mixing into the grass. Red and green makes such a pretty brown, doesn't it?)

A LAUGH. "oh, ya were serious about it! right, right. i didn't expect ya to do that. yers comes off easy, huh?" he sits down, kneeling. He unsheathes the big knife by his side. He looks at the larynx between the dead knight's fingers. Blood has such a good smell. It makes him hungry again. but it doesn't matter. his eyes fix back on theirs, and he puts three fingers over his own throat-apple, feeling the larynx. As if calculating. He pulls at the skin a little, then, plunges the knife into his own throat. Blood. The sharp pain shooting up into the back of his eyes, the urge to stop. But his eyes remain fixed on it, as if dueling, while he twists the knife and drags it down. He does his best to contain it, but blood begins to force its way out of his mouth. He does that noise men do when stabbed- that choked, skittery sound of pain. His other hand pulls while the other works the blade stuck in his own throat. A dare.

(Its jaw goes slack as it watches, its own fingers wrapping around its larynx and pulling. Muscle and flesh and tendons tears. Hunger slams into it, and it jolts forward. Fingers still in its own throat, its still-gauntleted hand joins the mess on his throat. It tugs at the flesh, tugging it out of the way so it can see better. Easier for him to cut, too. Gods, it's hungry.)

Blood! It comes out of him in neat bursts, out of the wound and out of his mouth, out of his nose, aspiration of the liquid filling his throat to blame. It burns and it hurts, but he cannot help but laugh in a deranged gurgling sound as it lunges for the wound in his throat. he lets go of the knife, feeling the sudden sedation of blood loss make him dizzy. caro enim mea vere est cibus. he doesn't fight back against the urge to die, feeling the ever familiar sensation of limbs going cold and limp. the blood from his mouth smells a bit like wine. his eyes glaze over and become half-lidded, body threatening to fall back.

(It fumbles for a moment. It can wait to eat, it can finish what it wanted to do first. It shoves its hand into his throat, wraps the hand around his larynx, and pulls. It pulls its own larynx out at the same time, a slow trickle of blood following it. No blood pressure, it seems. Dead thing. It shoves its larynx into his throat, and shoves his larynx into its throat. It'll take a few hours to heal if the bugs don't decide to prioritize it. Job done well enough, it shoves his body to the ground and presses its teeth to his throat. Not the larynx, the flesh around it. Muscle and tendon. Pull and chew and consume.)

tastes like meat. like all meat does. like formerly living thing. he does a few choking noises for a couple of seconds, before all noise dies with a little rattle from his throat. his eyes do follow it, though, even if the body feels dead. he's smiling even while trapped in the paralysis of temporary death. tastes like iron, like curses, like all meat does. take yer fill, i don't mind.

(It pants and chews and eats. It doesn't want to have to redo the pain of tearing out its throat. Move away from the throat, dig into the shoulders and the chest and ribs and dig and dig and dig and feast and it's so hungry always it hurts it's so hungry the gods may damn it but it's in heaven kneeling here for ever and ever and)

here i am, stranger, opened up like a gutted animal before ya. tendons, muscle, fatty layer protectin' the viscera within. the covering of the ribs, the pale connections of fat atween organs. stomach, intestines, the reek of 'em, the heart, the liver, the lungs underneath, a whole feast laid out for ya. don't say i'm not generous. it feels weird. all i do is feel the tug of yer teeth 'n claws as you eat away. ain't it good? just another fucked up carcass for ya to get rid of an urge with. an unnatural jolt, a sudden convulsion of the hands. a weak kick. senseless movements. almost as if still laughing.

(It twitches as if considering backing off. It doesn't move away. Its blood mixes with his. Teeth knock against ribs. When's the last time it was able to feast well? It doesn't remember the last person it ate. Gods, it's so hungry. Break the ribs, get them out of the way. It's running hot. Does it hurt to have its hands inside? Does it hurt to be eaten?)

it hurts in sudden flashes. but it feels good. it's nice. 's the only way i can rest. it feels funny to have its fingers diggin' in, pulling, breaking precious things. it feels odd to feel the wind over things normally kept hidden. like the whole world's rushin' in to dry up the blood. There's so much damn blood. it gets everywhere! 's fun. there's that little pang of pain from the moments the body tries wakin' up. like stabs into his soul. his diaphragm sinks in and he lets out a bellow from its weight forcing the air out of his lungs. it's nice to be eaten. almost makes me feel wanted.

(It pauses to shove a hand into his mouth and down his throat. Shut up shut up shut up. It doesn't want any wanderers coming by, or the dogs running back. It stares for a moment, then it can't resist the urge to return to his throat. Cover the larynx, eat everything else. Chew and pull and feast. Gods, everybody looks good covered in shared blood.)

i'm gonna hack away your head and when i have it in my hands i'm gonna pluck yer eyes out and spit into the holes i leave. i'm gonna make sure you end up as dog shit. i'll butcher your body and dishonor your soul until not even the ninth heaven takes ya. i'll defile your existence. i hope you reincarnate into a dung maggot.

promise?

aye, promise.

he opens up the bag with the roasted ducks, tosses a couple at the dogs, which swarm around the birds immediately, tails wagging so hard they may start a tornado at any moment. he takes the third duck with both hands, and takes a bite out of the breast of it, chewing without much politeness but with plenty of pleasure. He rips off one of the legs, and approaches to shove it into the visor as he did with the squirrel early. "try this. s so fuckin good right? right?? different than just roasted over a fire! proper cookin'! god damn!" then, as if answering the last question, he just opens up one of the barrels using a big dagger like a crowbar, and drinks from it by practically dunking his mouth into the dark wine. then he goes, "HAAAAAAH, THAT'S GOOD. THAT'S FUCKIN' GOOD!"

"most dogs dont drink wine but ah do, cus wine's delicious, 'n this is good fuckin' wine!" he sits down on a closed barrel and keeps eating the duck. Big bites, ripping apart chunks of meat and dragging his teeth over the bones to get every last piece of meat he can get. He does eat like a dog. "im jus gonna hide it in a cave n whenever i want wine im gonna go there. s easy. i mostly steal it from like, soldier camps. but s easier to just buy stuff, aye. dont care much for money, but it does buy nice food somtimes, better than eatin' squirrels 'n corpses''

"aye, monks are weak as hell, you can just break 'em easy, just pull 'n twist-" and he does the same thing with the second wing- a pull of the joint, then a twist of the wrist, dislocation. he shoves it in his mouth and eats it. a few chews, then a swallow. he licks his teeth. "bad. cus i was starvin'. i woke up 'n i saw my own dead body besides me, and i was mad with hunger. dogs brought me birds and squirrels sometimes. sometimes rats. but i grabbed at the stiff body of me 'n bit down what i could bite down. i was too thin 'nyways. tasted like... all meat. yknow." he finally finishes the duck. he tosses the bones down, then looks at them. a little eyebrow raise, then a look over at the armored creature besides him. "what's your deal, sellsword? what are ye?"

"gamblin'! that's how ya got all that gold, then? gamblin' 'n winning? audentis fortuna iuvat, somethin' somethin'. never had proper luck mahself, don't like gamblin' unless i can end it in a duel." he gets off the barrel of wine to go dunk his mouth in the open barrel again, lapping at it like a dog. here's one who's true to his nature. "so you ain't got skin 'n yer full of bugs. i ain't ever heard of nothin' like that. got a couple friends, one of em makes undyin' rats full of mushrooms. he talks to the mushrooms 'n stuff. he says they take over the dead n make em better. but never heard of no damn bug. the world's full a wonders, ain't it"

"pays well to be a mercenary, then. how nice." he gets lost in thought for a moment. he's thinking about someone. it doesn't last long. he takes another gulp of wine, cleaning his mouth with the back of his hand again. "friends. dogs need packs. i have mine. but 's different than mercenary work. roots... made out of blood. hunger's better shared." his eyes are odd. he himself is odd. aside from the first smile, which was more of a practiced imitation of what he had seen before, he doesn't really emote much, and his voice is flat, completely even, as if he was a corpse that had recently re-learned to speak. indeed, not a human. indeed, maybe more alike to each other. he looks at the way the gauntlet pulls at the grass. "do you not drink, brother?"

"ah see. so you ain't taken a liking to sedation." he sits down on the grass, now. his dogs come over, sniffing his hands and his clothes. he reaches up to take the fourth duck, ripping a leg off and giving the rest to the dogs. as he eats, duck leg in one hand, the other one mindlessly pets the head of whatever dog's closer. they seem content. "see, stranger, why don't ya buy yerself a house or somethin'? you've got enough gold to buy yourself a title 'n a tiny plot ah land, don't ya? you don't seem like the type to enjoy wanderin'. you look exhausted, ya move tired. but i can't blame ya. dyin' is tiresome, indeed.''

he pulls at some tall stalk, cutting it with his nail and this thumb, and bites off the little undeveloped head of chaff, spitting it away. he passes the straw over to Helm, twirling it between his fingers. "wild dog. aye. stray dog. free dog. don't need a house nor a title nor nothin'. i'm free as free can be. not a slave to no one, not even the gods up above. i do as i want whenever i please. i eat, i drink, i fuck, i kill. 's a good life. gold buys you roasted duck, but not freedom, aye?"

"Wild dog. Wish I could be a stray. I like being fed from a master's hand too much, though." (It takes the the straw and sticks it into its eye slit. Ow. It crooks its knees and folds its legs. After a moment of consideration, it sticks its hands behind its helmet.) "I tried takin over the castle a short while ago. Didn't work. If it did, I would've had a title and land, I guess. D'you still want that three gold?"

"you ain't a person if you don't wanna be a person. bein' a person is too much work. 's all actin' pretend 'n takin' the joke of sapience too far. we are the gods' most annoyin' mistakes." a scoff. he closes his eyes, feeling the soft fur of Cat Gutter's head and back. He sighs through his nose like an old dog, and another dog follows suit. "if ya stop followin' those rules, then ya go back to not-person. children, madmen, cripples, foreigners. if ya upset the theatre of humanity, ya get kicked out of the play. don't play along with them rules, brother, unless yer gonna get some sorta benefit from it." "yeah, would be nice. make sure ya send good fighters. i like duelin'. feels good to steal shit from someone tryin' to kill ya."

he lifts up a finger. "people are dead. they respect the dead a lot more than they respect the livin' at times. that's why there's... songs 'n poems about cocksuckers 'n their lineages n whatever the hell they did while alive... then they die 'n they make 'em saints. but yeah, the looks affect a lot of it, huh?" he takes a blade of grass, plucking it between his fingers, watching it come undone as he toys with it. "you don't remember bein' alive?"

a laugh. it's weird. more of a snort and an animalistic sound of amusement than a proper laugh. it's honest, at least. a bit like a hyena, if either of these dudes knew what hyenas sound like. "right." he moves his head to look over at the dead thing besides him, and he hums while looking over it. "definitely's old. you stuck in there?"

"Stuck in the armor? No. Just hurts to take it off." (As if to prove the point, it adjusts itself so its hands are in the air, and it starts peeling off the left gauntlet. Blood drips down its vambraces. Nice laugh.) "Since I am, uh, fused. Sort of. I guess you don't have that problem?"

oh, huh. sniff sniff. that's a nice smell. blood under armor. but there's that pungency of rot to it, huh. guess they're different in that way. "nah. i just get hungry. i guess the body runs out of blood while healin', so i gotta make more. 'n i get hungry. 'n there's the convulsions, too. i ain't fond of them. but guess i gotta be thankful i can keep my skin. it just scars bad." "so yer stuck in there, like a mollusk. guess that's just how it is, huh? at least yer always protected with that armor, then. like... a beetle... a hard-shelled animal."

"I don't run outta blood ever." (It tosses the gauntlet into the air, then mutters curses when the thing lands on its visor and knocks the partly chewed straw fully into its helmet. It sits up and sticks the skinned hand into the metal to try and retrieve the plant.) "An I get hungry but I don't haveta eat ever. Can you regrow limbs? That might be a bug thing. That's, uh, heh. Two bug things I guess I have. With the shell."

he laughs again, with his odd animal laugh, at the gauntlet incident and the following rummaging in its own visor. ''you dont gotta eat? lucky, then you don't gotta spend so much time lookin' for food, huh? but bein' hungry sucks. you got any way to satisfy the hunger?" ...he thinks about it. "aye, i can regrow limbs. takes me a while, though. 's better if i can just reattach it. gotta hold it a while, though. ya must be some sorta crab. or a metal lobster. man-sized metal lobster. would be a nice beast to draw on the margins of a prayer book."

"I can still eat, mutt." (It mutters, embarrassed.) "You fed me that squirrel and duck leg earlier. An I am capable of removin my visor. I eat people an animals sometimes. I just spent most of a century not eatin. You gotta nice laugh. Do you think it's from your larynx? If I took it would you regrow it?"

"yeah but ya don't die from not eatin', right? starvation sucks. it eats your brain 'n your body 'n leaves you rottin' before you die for real. consider yerself lucky, if hunger won't kill you. then it ain't no different from an itch to scratch nstead of a need." scratch, scratch. he scratches at his own chin, then hums while pressing two fingers to his larynx. "yeah. i've had my head cut off. took me a bit to speak, but ah can do it. why? you wanna open up my throat?"

"Yeah." (It twists around to stare at him, pulling its hand out of its helmet. It's hungry.) "How much can you regrow? I'm hungry. Think it would be interesting if we swapped throats."

a weird smile crawls up on his face. there's a sickening curiosity brewing now; he's the kind of man that likes taking things as far as possible. and when you can't die, then, everything's a ''why the hell not". this is new. "i 'unno. but i won't die. guess i gotta repay yer kindness somehow, eh? go right ahead. i'm dyin' to know too."

"Yeah yeah yeah give me a minute." (It starts pulling on its visor. Undo the latches, pull off the leather, unscrew the bolts. Peel the metal away from the skull, drip blood onto its cuirass. Ow ow ow. Set the plate aside, check his face for a reaction.)

his face remains neutral, almost bored. when the peeling of the visor is done, however, he does raise his eyebrows ever so slightly. he sits up, sniffing at it. sniff sniff. a couple of dogs join, too, but he growls at them, and they back off. "no wonder ya smelled so good. reminds me of skinned venison." he licks at the blood seeping through the muscle tissue of its cheek, underneath the pale lines of where the cheekbone is. a tongue click, as if tasting wine. "interestin'. i've never met nothin' like ye. i've seen undead a bit like this, keepin' their wounds, more skinned or burnt flesh than man, but not as lucid."

''like all meat does. like a dead thing.'' a tilt of the head. like a confused dog. he turns his head to look at his dogs, and does a few chittering, bark-like noises. ears perk up, and each dog leaves their own way, some leaving together, some leaving for the forest on their own. they probably get mad when they see him get hurt. safer without 'em around. "what'cha doin'?"

"Gotta remove the larynx to switch them, don't-" (Its voice gets garbled as the muscle parts for its fingers. Its eyes stay fixed on him. Blood drips down down down, mixing into the grass. Red and green makes such a pretty brown, doesn't it?)

A LAUGH. "oh, ya were serious about it! right, right. i didn't expect ya to do that. yers comes off easy, huh?" he sits down, kneeling. He unsheathes the big knife by his side. He looks at the larynx between the dead knight's fingers. Blood has such a good smell. It makes him hungry again. but it doesn't matter. his eyes fix back on theirs, and he puts three fingers over his own throat-apple, feeling the larynx. As if calculating. He pulls at the skin a little, then, plunges the knife into his own throat. Blood. The sharp pain shooting up into the back of his eyes, the urge to stop. But his eyes remain fixed on it, as if dueling, while he twists the knife and drags it down. He does his best to contain it, but blood begins to force its way out of his mouth. He does that noise men do when stabbed- that choked, skittery sound of pain. His other hand pulls while the other works the blade stuck in his own throat. A dare.

(Its jaw goes slack as it watches, its own fingers wrapping around its larynx and pulling. Muscle and flesh and tendons tears. Hunger slams into it, and it jolts forward. Fingers still in its own throat, its still-gauntleted hand joins the mess on his throat. It tugs at the flesh, tugging it out of the way so it can see better. Easier for him to cut, too. Gods, it's hungry.)

Blood! It comes out of him in neat bursts, out of the wound and out of his mouth, out of his nose, aspiration of the liquid filling his throat to blame. It burns and it hurts, but he cannot help but laugh in a deranged gurgling sound as it lunges for the wound in his throat. he lets go of the knife, feeling the sudden sedation of blood loss make him dizzy. caro enim mea vere est cibus. he doesn't fight back against the urge to die, feeling the ever familiar sensation of limbs going cold and limp. the blood from his mouth smells a bit like wine. his eyes glaze over and become half-lidded, body threatening to fall back.

(It fumbles for a moment. It can wait to eat, it can finish what it wanted to do first. It shoves its hand into his throat, wraps the hand around his larynx, and pulls. It pulls its own larynx out at the same time, a slow trickle of blood following it. No blood pressure, it seems. Dead thing. It shoves its larynx into his throat, and shoves his larynx into its throat. It'll take a few hours to heal if the bugs don't decide to prioritize it. Job done well enough, it shoves his body to the ground and presses its teeth to his throat. Not the larynx, the flesh around it. Muscle and tendon. Pull and chew and consume.)

tastes like meat. like all meat does. like formerly living thing. he does a few choking noises for a couple of seconds, before all noise dies with a little rattle from his throat. his eyes do follow it, though, even if the body feels dead. he's smiling even while trapped in the paralysis of temporary death. tastes like iron, like curses, like all meat does. take yer fill, i don't mind.

(It pants and chews and eats. It doesn't want to have to redo the pain of tearing out its throat. Move away from the throat, dig into the shoulders and the chest and ribs and dig and dig and dig and feast and it's so hungry always it hurts it's so hungry the gods may damn it but it's in heaven kneeling here for ever and ever and)

here i am, stranger, opened up like a gutted animal before ya. tendons, muscle, fatty layer protectin' the viscera within. the covering of the ribs, the pale connections of fat atween organs. stomach, intestines, the reek of 'em, the heart, the liver, the lungs underneath, a whole feast laid out for ya. don't say i'm not generous. it feels weird. all i do is feel the tug of yer teeth 'n claws as you eat away. ain't it good? just another fucked up carcass for ya to get rid of an urge with. an unnatural jolt, a sudden convulsion of the hands. a weak kick. senseless movements. almost as if still laughing.

(It twitches as if considering backing off. It doesn't move away. Its blood mixes with his. Teeth knock against ribs. When's the last time it was able to feast well? It doesn't remember the last person it ate. Gods, it's so hungry. Break the ribs, get them out of the way. It's running hot. Does it hurt to have its hands inside? Does it hurt to be eaten?)

it hurts in sudden flashes. but it feels good. it's nice. 's the only way i can rest. it feels funny to have its fingers diggin' in, pulling, breaking precious things. it feels odd to feel the wind over things normally kept hidden. like the whole world's rushin' in to dry up the blood. There's so much damn blood. it gets everywhere! 's fun. there's that little pang of pain from the moments the body tries wakin' up. like stabs into his soul. his diaphragm sinks in and he lets out a bellow from its weight forcing the air out of his lungs. it's nice to be eaten. almost makes me feel wanted.

he opens up the bag with the roasted ducks, tosses a couple at the dogs, which swarm around the birds immediately, tails wagging so hard they may start a tornado at any moment. he takes the third duck with both hands, and takes a bite out of the breast of it, chewing without much politeness but with plenty of pleasure. He rips off one of the legs, and approaches to shove it into the visor as he did with the squirrel early. "try this. s so fuckin good right? right?? different than just roasted over a fire! proper cookin'! god damn!" then, as if answering the last question, he just opens up one of the barrels using a big dagger like a crowbar, and drinks from it by practically dunking his mouth into the dark wine. then he goes, "HAAAAAAH, THAT'S GOOD. THAT'S FUCKIN' GOOD!"

"most dogs dont drink wine but ah do, cus wine's delicious, 'n this is good fuckin' wine!" he sits down on a closed barrel and keeps eating the duck. Big bites, ripping apart chunks of meat and dragging his teeth over the bones to get every last piece of meat he can get. He does eat like a dog. "im jus gonna hide it in a cave n whenever i want wine im gonna go there. s easy. i mostly steal it from like, soldier camps. but s easier to just buy stuff, aye. dont care much for money, but it does buy nice food somtimes, better than eatin' squirrels 'n corpses''

"aye, monks are weak as hell, you can just break 'em easy, just pull 'n twist-" and he does the same thing with the second wing- a pull of the joint, then a twist of the wrist, dislocation. he shoves it in his mouth and eats it. a few chews, then a swallow. he licks his teeth. "bad. cus i was starvin'. i woke up 'n i saw my own dead body besides me, and i was mad with hunger. dogs brought me birds and squirrels sometimes. sometimes rats. but i grabbed at the stiff body of me 'n bit down what i could bite down. i was too thin 'nyways. tasted like... all meat. yknow." he finally finishes the duck. he tosses the bones down, then looks at them. a little eyebrow raise, then a look over at the armored creature besides him. "what's your deal, sellsword? what are ye?"

"gamblin'! that's how ya got all that gold, then? gamblin' 'n winning? audentis fortuna iuvat, somethin' somethin'. never had proper luck mahself, don't like gamblin' unless i can end it in a duel." he gets off the barrel of wine to go dunk his mouth in the open barrel again, lapping at it like a dog. here's one who's true to his nature. "so you ain't got skin 'n yer full of bugs. i ain't ever heard of nothin' like that. got a couple friends, one of em makes undyin' rats full of mushrooms. he talks to the mushrooms 'n stuff. he says they take over the dead n make em better. but never heard of no damn bug. the world's full a wonders, ain't it"

"pays well to be a mercenary, then. how nice." he gets lost in thought for a moment. he's thinking about someone. it doesn't last long. he takes another gulp of wine, cleaning his mouth with the back of his hand again. "friends. dogs need packs. i have mine. but 's different than mercenary work. roots... made out of blood. hunger's better shared." his eyes are odd. he himself is odd. aside from the first smile, which was more of a practiced imitation of what he had seen before, he doesn't really emote much, and his voice is flat, completely even, as if he was a corpse that had recently re-learned to speak. indeed, not a human. indeed, maybe more alike to each other. he looks at the way the gauntlet pulls at the grass. "do you not drink, brother?"

"ah see. so you ain't taken a liking to sedation." he sits down on the grass, now. his dogs come over, sniffing his hands and his clothes. he reaches up to take the fourth duck, ripping a leg off and giving the rest to the dogs. as he eats, duck leg in one hand, the other one mindlessly pets the head of whatever dog's closer. they seem content. "see, stranger, why don't ya buy yerself a house or somethin'? you've got enough gold to buy yourself a title 'n a tiny plot ah land, don't ya? you don't seem like the type to enjoy wanderin'. you look exhausted, ya move tired. but i can't blame ya. dyin' is tiresome, indeed.''

he pulls at some tall stalk, cutting it with his nail and this thumb, and bites off the little undeveloped head of chaff, spitting it away. he passes the straw over to Helm, twirling it between his fingers. "wild dog. aye. stray dog. free dog. don't need a house nor a title nor nothin'. i'm free as free can be. not a slave to no one, not even the gods up above. i do as i want whenever i please. i eat, i drink, i fuck, i kill. 's a good life. gold buys you roasted duck, but not freedom, aye?"

"Wild dog. Wish I could be a stray. I like being fed from a master's hand too much, though." (It takes the the straw and sticks it into its eye slit. Ow. It crooks its knees and folds its legs. After a moment of consideration, it sticks its hands behind its helmet.) "I tried takin over the castle a short while ago. Didn't work. If it did, I would've had a title and land, I guess. D'you still want that three gold?"

"you ain't a person if you don't wanna be a person. bein' a person is too much work. 's all actin' pretend 'n takin' the joke of sapience too far. we are the gods' most annoyin' mistakes." a scoff. he closes his eyes, feeling the soft fur of Cat Gutter's head and back. He sighs through his nose like an old dog, and another dog follows suit. "if ya stop followin' those rules, then ya go back to not-person. children, madmen, cripples, foreigners. if ya upset the theatre of humanity, ya get kicked out of the play. don't play along with them rules, brother, unless yer gonna get some sorta benefit from it." "yeah, would be nice. make sure ya send good fighters. i like duelin'. feels good to steal shit from someone tryin' to kill ya."

he lifts up a finger. "people are dead. they respect the dead a lot more than they respect the livin' at times. that's why there's... songs 'n poems about cocksuckers 'n their lineages n whatever the hell they did while alive... then they die 'n they make 'em saints. but yeah, the looks affect a lot of it, huh?" he takes a blade of grass, plucking it between his fingers, watching it come undone as he toys with it. "you don't remember bein' alive?"

a laugh. it's weird. more of a snort and an animalistic sound of amusement than a proper laugh. it's honest, at least. a bit like a hyena, if either of these dudes knew what hyenas sound like. "right." he moves his head to look over at the dead thing besides him, and he hums while looking over it. "definitely's old. you stuck in there?"

"Stuck in the armor? No. Just hurts to take it off." (As if to prove the point, it adjusts itself so its hands are in the air, and it starts peeling off the left gauntlet. Blood drips down its vambraces. Nice laugh.) "Since I am, uh, fused. Sort of. I guess you don't have that problem?"

oh, huh. sniff sniff. that's a nice smell. blood under armor. but there's that pungency of rot to it, huh. guess they're different in that way. "nah. i just get hungry. i guess the body runs out of blood while healin', so i gotta make more. 'n i get hungry. 'n there's the convulsions, too. i ain't fond of them. but guess i gotta be thankful i can keep my skin. it just scars bad." "so yer stuck in there, like a mollusk. guess that's just how it is, huh? at least yer always protected with that armor, then. like... a beetle... a hard-shelled animal."

"I don't run outta blood ever." (It tosses the gauntlet into the air, then mutters curses when the thing lands on its visor and knocks the partly chewed straw fully into its helmet. It sits up and sticks the skinned hand into the metal to try and retrieve the plant.) "An I get hungry but I don't haveta eat ever. Can you regrow limbs? That might be a bug thing. That's, uh, heh. Two bug things I guess I have. With the shell."

he laughs again, with his odd animal laugh, at the gauntlet incident and the following rummaging in its own visor. ''you dont gotta eat? lucky, then you don't gotta spend so much time lookin' for food, huh? but bein' hungry sucks. you got any way to satisfy the hunger?" ...he thinks about it. "aye, i can regrow limbs. takes me a while, though. 's better if i can just reattach it. gotta hold it a while, though. ya must be some sorta crab. or a metal lobster. man-sized metal lobster. would be a nice beast to draw on the margins of a prayer book."

"I can still eat, mutt." (It mutters, embarrassed.) "You fed me that squirrel and duck leg earlier. An I am capable of removin my visor. I eat people an animals sometimes. I just spent most of a century not eatin. You gotta nice laugh. Do you think it's from your larynx? If I took it would you regrow it?"

"yeah but ya don't die from not eatin', right? starvation sucks. it eats your brain 'n your body 'n leaves you rottin' before you die for real. consider yerself lucky, if hunger won't kill you. then it ain't no different from an itch to scratch nstead of a need." scratch, scratch. he scratches at his own chin, then hums while pressing two fingers to his larynx. "yeah. i've had my head cut off. took me a bit to speak, but ah can do it. why? you wanna open up my throat?"

"Yeah." (It twists around to stare at him, pulling its hand out of its helmet. It's hungry.) "How much can you regrow? I'm hungry. Think it would be interesting if we swapped throats."

a weird smile crawls up on his face. there's a sickening curiosity brewing now; he's the kind of man that likes taking things as far as possible. and when you can't die, then, everything's a ''why the hell not". this is new. "i 'unno. but i won't die. guess i gotta repay yer kindness somehow, eh? go right ahead. i'm dyin' to know too."

"Yeah yeah yeah give me a minute." (It starts pulling on its visor. Undo the latches, pull off the leather, unscrew the bolts. Peel the metal away from the skull, drip blood onto its cuirass. Ow ow ow. Set the plate aside, check his face for a reaction.)

his face remains neutral, almost bored. when the peeling of the visor is done, however, he does raise his eyebrows ever so slightly. he sits up, sniffing at it. sniff sniff. a couple of dogs join, too, but he growls at them, and they back off. "no wonder ya smelled so good. reminds me of skinned venison." he licks at the blood seeping through the muscle tissue of its cheek, underneath the pale lines of where the cheekbone is. a tongue click, as if tasting wine. "interestin'. i've never met nothin' like ye. i've seen undead a bit like this, keepin' their wounds, more skinned or burnt flesh than man, but not as lucid."

''like all meat does. like a dead thing.'' a tilt of the head. like a confused dog. he turns his head to look at his dogs, and does a few chittering, bark-like noises. ears perk up, and each dog leaves their own way, some leaving together, some leaving for the forest on their own. they probably get mad when they see him get hurt. safer without 'em around. "what'cha doin'?"

"Gotta remove the larynx to switch them, don't-" (Its voice gets garbled as the muscle parts for its fingers. Its eyes stay fixed on him. Blood drips down down down, mixing into the grass. Red and green makes such a pretty brown, doesn't it?)

A LAUGH. "oh, ya were serious about it! right, right. i didn't expect ya to do that. yers comes off easy, huh?" he sits down, kneeling. He unsheathes the big knife by his side. He looks at the larynx between the dead knight's fingers. Blood has such a good smell. It makes him hungry again. but it doesn't matter. his eyes fix back on theirs, and he puts three fingers over his own throat-apple, feeling the larynx. As if calculating. He pulls at the skin a little, then, plunges the knife into his own throat. Blood. The sharp pain shooting up into the back of his eyes, the urge to stop. But his eyes remain fixed on it, as if dueling, while he twists the knife and drags it down. He does his best to contain it, but blood begins to force its way out of his mouth. He does that noise men do when stabbed- that choked, skittery sound of pain. His other hand pulls while the other works the blade stuck in his own throat. A dare.

(Its jaw goes slack as it watches, its own fingers wrapping around its larynx and pulling. Muscle and flesh and tendons tears. Hunger slams into it, and it jolts forward. Fingers still in its own throat, its still-gauntleted hand joins the mess on his throat. It tugs at the flesh, tugging it out of the way so it can see better. Easier for him to cut, too. Gods, it's hungry.)

Blood! It comes out of him in neat bursts, out of the wound and out of his mouth, out of his nose, aspiration of the liquid filling his throat to blame. It burns and it hurts, but he cannot help but laugh in a deranged gurgling sound as it lunges for the wound in his throat. he lets go of the knife, feeling the sudden sedation of blood loss make him dizzy. caro enim mea vere est cibus. he doesn't fight back against the urge to die, feeling the ever familiar sensation of limbs going cold and limp. the blood from his mouth smells a bit like wine. his eyes glaze over and become half-lidded, body threatening to fall back.

(It fumbles for a moment. It can wait to eat, it can finish what it wanted to do first. It shoves its hand into his throat, wraps the hand around his larynx, and pulls. It pulls its own larynx out at the same time, a slow trickle of blood following it. No blood pressure, it seems. Dead thing. It shoves its larynx into his throat, and shoves his larynx into its throat. It'll take a few hours to heal if the bugs don't decide to prioritize it. Job done well enough, it shoves his body to the ground and presses its teeth to his throat. Not the larynx, the flesh around it. Muscle and tendon. Pull and chew and consume.)

tastes like meat. like all meat does. like formerly living thing. he does a few choking noises for a couple of seconds, before all noise dies with a little rattle from his throat. his eyes do follow it, though, even if the body feels dead. he's smiling even while trapped in the paralysis of temporary death. tastes like iron, like curses, like all meat does. take yer fill, i don't mind.

(It pants and chews and eats. It doesn't want to have to redo the pain of tearing out its throat. Move away from the throat, dig into the shoulders and the chest and ribs and dig and dig and dig and feast and it's so hungry always it hurts it's so hungry the gods may damn it but it's in heaven kneeling here for ever and ever and)

here i am, stranger, opened up like a gutted animal before ya. tendons, muscle, fatty layer protectin' the viscera within. the covering of the ribs, the pale connections of fat atween organs. stomach, intestines, the reek of 'em, the heart, the liver, the lungs underneath, a whole feast laid out for ya. don't say i'm not generous. it feels weird. all i do is feel the tug of yer teeth 'n claws as you eat away. ain't it good? just another fucked up carcass for ya to get rid of an urge with. an unnatural jolt, a sudden convulsion of the hands. a weak kick. senseless movements. almost as if still laughing.

he opens up the bag with the roasted ducks, tosses a couple at the dogs, which swarm around the birds immediately, tails wagging so hard they may start a tornado at any moment. he takes the third duck with both hands, and takes a bite out of the breast of it, chewing without much politeness but with plenty of pleasure. He rips off one of the legs, and approaches to shove it into the visor as he did with the squirrel early. "try this. s so fuckin good right? right?? different than just roasted over a fire! proper cookin'! god damn!" then, as if answering the last question, he just opens up one of the barrels using a big dagger like a crowbar, and drinks from it by practically dunking his mouth into the dark wine. then he goes, "HAAAAAAH, THAT'S GOOD. THAT'S FUCKIN' GOOD!"

"most dogs dont drink wine but ah do, cus wine's delicious, 'n this is good fuckin' wine!" he sits down on a closed barrel and keeps eating the duck. Big bites, ripping apart chunks of meat and dragging his teeth over the bones to get every last piece of meat he can get. He does eat like a dog. "im jus gonna hide it in a cave n whenever i want wine im gonna go there. s easy. i mostly steal it from like, soldier camps. but s easier to just buy stuff, aye. dont care much for money, but it does buy nice food somtimes, better than eatin' squirrels 'n corpses''

"aye, monks are weak as hell, you can just break 'em easy, just pull 'n twist-" and he does the same thing with the second wing- a pull of the joint, then a twist of the wrist, dislocation. he shoves it in his mouth and eats it. a few chews, then a swallow. he licks his teeth. "bad. cus i was starvin'. i woke up 'n i saw my own dead body besides me, and i was mad with hunger. dogs brought me birds and squirrels sometimes. sometimes rats. but i grabbed at the stiff body of me 'n bit down what i could bite down. i was too thin 'nyways. tasted like... all meat. yknow." he finally finishes the duck. he tosses the bones down, then looks at them. a little eyebrow raise, then a look over at the armored creature besides him. "what's your deal, sellsword? what are ye?"

"gamblin'! that's how ya got all that gold, then? gamblin' 'n winning? audentis fortuna iuvat, somethin' somethin'. never had proper luck mahself, don't like gamblin' unless i can end it in a duel." he gets off the barrel of wine to go dunk his mouth in the open barrel again, lapping at it like a dog. here's one who's true to his nature. "so you ain't got skin 'n yer full of bugs. i ain't ever heard of nothin' like that. got a couple friends, one of em makes undyin' rats full of mushrooms. he talks to the mushrooms 'n stuff. he says they take over the dead n make em better. but never heard of no damn bug. the world's full a wonders, ain't it"

"pays well to be a mercenary, then. how nice." he gets lost in thought for a moment. he's thinking about someone. it doesn't last long. he takes another gulp of wine, cleaning his mouth with the back of his hand again. "friends. dogs need packs. i have mine. but 's different than mercenary work. roots... made out of blood. hunger's better shared." his eyes are odd. he himself is odd. aside from the first smile, which was more of a practiced imitation of what he had seen before, he doesn't really emote much, and his voice is flat, completely even, as if he was a corpse that had recently re-learned to speak. indeed, not a human. indeed, maybe more alike to each other. he looks at the way the gauntlet pulls at the grass. "do you not drink, brother?"

"ah see. so you ain't taken a liking to sedation." he sits down on the grass, now. his dogs come over, sniffing his hands and his clothes. he reaches up to take the fourth duck, ripping a leg off and giving the rest to the dogs. as he eats, duck leg in one hand, the other one mindlessly pets the head of whatever dog's closer. they seem content. "see, stranger, why don't ya buy yerself a house or somethin'? you've got enough gold to buy yourself a title 'n a tiny plot ah land, don't ya? you don't seem like the type to enjoy wanderin'. you look exhausted, ya move tired. but i can't blame ya. dyin' is tiresome, indeed.''

he pulls at some tall stalk, cutting it with his nail and this thumb, and bites off the little undeveloped head of chaff, spitting it away. he passes the straw over to Helm, twirling it between his fingers. "wild dog. aye. stray dog. free dog. don't need a house nor a title nor nothin'. i'm free as free can be. not a slave to no one, not even the gods up above. i do as i want whenever i please. i eat, i drink, i fuck, i kill. 's a good life. gold buys you roasted duck, but not freedom, aye?"

"Wild dog. Wish I could be a stray. I like being fed from a master's hand too much, though." (It takes the the straw and sticks it into its eye slit. Ow. It crooks its knees and folds its legs. After a moment of consideration, it sticks its hands behind its helmet.) "I tried takin over the castle a short while ago. Didn't work. If it did, I would've had a title and land, I guess. D'you still want that three gold?"

"you ain't a person if you don't wanna be a person. bein' a person is too much work. 's all actin' pretend 'n takin' the joke of sapience too far. we are the gods' most annoyin' mistakes." a scoff. he closes his eyes, feeling the soft fur of Cat Gutter's head and back. He sighs through his nose like an old dog, and another dog follows suit. "if ya stop followin' those rules, then ya go back to not-person. children, madmen, cripples, foreigners. if ya upset the theatre of humanity, ya get kicked out of the play. don't play along with them rules, brother, unless yer gonna get some sorta benefit from it." "yeah, would be nice. make sure ya send good fighters. i like duelin'. feels good to steal shit from someone tryin' to kill ya."

he lifts up a finger. "people are dead. they respect the dead a lot more than they respect the livin' at times. that's why there's... songs 'n poems about cocksuckers 'n their lineages n whatever the hell they did while alive... then they die 'n they make 'em saints. but yeah, the looks affect a lot of it, huh?" he takes a blade of grass, plucking it between his fingers, watching it come undone as he toys with it. "you don't remember bein' alive?"

a laugh. it's weird. more of a snort and an animalistic sound of amusement than a proper laugh. it's honest, at least. a bit like a hyena, if either of these dudes knew what hyenas sound like. "right." he moves his head to look over at the dead thing besides him, and he hums while looking over it. "definitely's old. you stuck in there?"

"Stuck in the armor? No. Just hurts to take it off." (As if to prove the point, it adjusts itself so its hands are in the air, and it starts peeling off the left gauntlet. Blood drips down its vambraces. Nice laugh.) "Since I am, uh, fused. Sort of. I guess you don't have that problem?"

oh, huh. sniff sniff. that's a nice smell. blood under armor. but there's that pungency of rot to it, huh. guess they're different in that way. "nah. i just get hungry. i guess the body runs out of blood while healin', so i gotta make more. 'n i get hungry. 'n there's the convulsions, too. i ain't fond of them. but guess i gotta be thankful i can keep my skin. it just scars bad." "so yer stuck in there, like a mollusk. guess that's just how it is, huh? at least yer always protected with that armor, then. like... a beetle... a hard-shelled animal."

"I don't run outta blood ever." (It tosses the gauntlet into the air, then mutters curses when the thing lands on its visor and knocks the partly chewed straw fully into its helmet. It sits up and sticks the skinned hand into the metal to try and retrieve the plant.) "An I get hungry but I don't haveta eat ever. Can you regrow limbs? That might be a bug thing. That's, uh, heh. Two bug things I guess I have. With the shell."

he laughs again, with his odd animal laugh, at the gauntlet incident and the following rummaging in its own visor. ''you dont gotta eat? lucky, then you don't gotta spend so much time lookin' for food, huh? but bein' hungry sucks. you got any way to satisfy the hunger?" ...he thinks about it. "aye, i can regrow limbs. takes me a while, though. 's better if i can just reattach it. gotta hold it a while, though. ya must be some sorta crab. or a metal lobster. man-sized metal lobster. would be a nice beast to draw on the margins of a prayer book."

"I can still eat, mutt." (It mutters, embarrassed.) "You fed me that squirrel and duck leg earlier. An I am capable of removin my visor. I eat people an animals sometimes. I just spent most of a century not eatin. You gotta nice laugh. Do you think it's from your larynx? If I took it would you regrow it?"

"yeah but ya don't die from not eatin', right? starvation sucks. it eats your brain 'n your body 'n leaves you rottin' before you die for real. consider yerself lucky, if hunger won't kill you. then it ain't no different from an itch to scratch nstead of a need." scratch, scratch. he scratches at his own chin, then hums while pressing two fingers to his larynx. "yeah. i've had my head cut off. took me a bit to speak, but ah can do it. why? you wanna open up my throat?"

"Yeah." (It twists around to stare at him, pulling its hand out of its helmet. It's hungry.) "How much can you regrow? I'm hungry. Think it would be interesting if we swapped throats."

a weird smile crawls up on his face. there's a sickening curiosity brewing now; he's the kind of man that likes taking things as far as possible. and when you can't die, then, everything's a ''why the hell not". this is new. "i 'unno. but i won't die. guess i gotta repay yer kindness somehow, eh? go right ahead. i'm dyin' to know too."

"Yeah yeah yeah give me a minute." (It starts pulling on its visor. Undo the latches, pull off the leather, unscrew the bolts. Peel the metal away from the skull, drip blood onto its cuirass. Ow ow ow. Set the plate aside, check his face for a reaction.)

his face remains neutral, almost bored. when the peeling of the visor is done, however, he does raise his eyebrows ever so slightly. he sits up, sniffing at it. sniff sniff. a couple of dogs join, too, but he growls at them, and they back off. "no wonder ya smelled so good. reminds me of skinned venison." he licks at the blood seeping through the muscle tissue of its cheek, underneath the pale lines of where the cheekbone is. a tongue click, as if tasting wine. "interestin'. i've never met nothin' like ye. i've seen undead a bit like this, keepin' their wounds, more skinned or burnt flesh than man, but not as lucid."

''like all meat does. like a dead thing.'' a tilt of the head. like a confused dog. he turns his head to look at his dogs, and does a few chittering, bark-like noises. ears perk up, and each dog leaves their own way, some leaving together, some leaving for the forest on their own. they probably get mad when they see him get hurt. safer without 'em around. "what'cha doin'?"

"Gotta remove the larynx to switch them, don't-" (Its voice gets garbled as the muscle parts for its fingers. Its eyes stay fixed on him. Blood drips down down down, mixing into the grass. Red and green makes such a pretty brown, doesn't it?)

A LAUGH. "oh, ya were serious about it! right, right. i didn't expect ya to do that. yers comes off easy, huh?" he sits down, kneeling. He unsheathes the big knife by his side. He looks at the larynx between the dead knight's fingers. Blood has such a good smell. It makes him hungry again. but it doesn't matter. his eyes fix back on theirs, and he puts three fingers over his own throat-apple, feeling the larynx. As if calculating. He pulls at the skin a little, then, plunges the knife into his own throat. Blood. The sharp pain shooting up into the back of his eyes, the urge to stop. But his eyes remain fixed on it, as if dueling, while he twists the knife and drags it down. He does his best to contain it, but blood begins to force its way out of his mouth. He does that noise men do when stabbed- that choked, skittery sound of pain. His other hand pulls while the other works the blade stuck in his own throat. A dare.

(Its jaw goes slack as it watches, its own fingers wrapping around its larynx and pulling. Muscle and flesh and tendons tears. Hunger slams into it, and it jolts forward. Fingers still in its own throat, its still-gauntleted hand joins the mess on his throat. It tugs at the flesh, tugging it out of the way so it can see better. Easier for him to cut, too. Gods, it's hungry.)

Blood! It comes out of him in neat bursts, out of the wound and out of his mouth, out of his nose, aspiration of the liquid filling his throat to blame. It burns and it hurts, but he cannot help but laugh in a deranged gurgling sound as it lunges for the wound in his throat. he lets go of the knife, feeling the sudden sedation of blood loss make him dizzy. caro enim mea vere est cibus. he doesn't fight back against the urge to die, feeling the ever familiar sensation of limbs going cold and limp. the blood from his mouth smells a bit like wine. his eyes glaze over and become half-lidded, body threatening to fall back.

(It fumbles for a moment. It can wait to eat, it can finish what it wanted to do first. It shoves its hand into his throat, wraps the hand around his larynx, and pulls. It pulls its own larynx out at the same time, a slow trickle of blood following it. No blood pressure, it seems. Dead thing. It shoves its larynx into his throat, and shoves his larynx into its throat. It'll take a few hours to heal if the bugs don't decide to prioritize it. Job done well enough, it shoves his body to the ground and presses its teeth to his throat. Not the larynx, the flesh around it. Muscle and tendon. Pull and chew and consume.)

tastes like meat. like all meat does. like formerly living thing. he does a few choking noises for a couple of seconds, before all noise dies with a little rattle from his throat. his eyes do follow it, though, even if the body feels dead. he's smiling even while trapped in the paralysis of temporary death. tastes like iron, like curses, like all meat does. take yer fill, i don't mind.

he opens up the bag with the roasted ducks, tosses a couple at the dogs, which swarm around the birds immediately, tails wagging so hard they may start a tornado at any moment. he takes the third duck with both hands, and takes a bite out of the breast of it, chewing without much politeness but with plenty of pleasure. He rips off one of the legs, and approaches to shove it into the visor as he did with the squirrel early. "try this. s so fuckin good right? right?? different than just roasted over a fire! proper cookin'! god damn!" then, as if answering the last question, he just opens up one of the barrels using a big dagger like a crowbar, and drinks from it by practically dunking his mouth into the dark wine. then he goes, "HAAAAAAH, THAT'S GOOD. THAT'S FUCKIN' GOOD!"

"most dogs dont drink wine but ah do, cus wine's delicious, 'n this is good fuckin' wine!" he sits down on a closed barrel and keeps eating the duck. Big bites, ripping apart chunks of meat and dragging his teeth over the bones to get every last piece of meat he can get. He does eat like a dog. "im jus gonna hide it in a cave n whenever i want wine im gonna go there. s easy. i mostly steal it from like, soldier camps. but s easier to just buy stuff, aye. dont care much for money, but it does buy nice food somtimes, better than eatin' squirrels 'n corpses''

"aye, monks are weak as hell, you can just break 'em easy, just pull 'n twist-" and he does the same thing with the second wing- a pull of the joint, then a twist of the wrist, dislocation. he shoves it in his mouth and eats it. a few chews, then a swallow. he licks his teeth. "bad. cus i was starvin'. i woke up 'n i saw my own dead body besides me, and i was mad with hunger. dogs brought me birds and squirrels sometimes. sometimes rats. but i grabbed at the stiff body of me 'n bit down what i could bite down. i was too thin 'nyways. tasted like... all meat. yknow." he finally finishes the duck. he tosses the bones down, then looks at them. a little eyebrow raise, then a look over at the armored creature besides him. "what's your deal, sellsword? what are ye?"

"gamblin'! that's how ya got all that gold, then? gamblin' 'n winning? audentis fortuna iuvat, somethin' somethin'. never had proper luck mahself, don't like gamblin' unless i can end it in a duel." he gets off the barrel of wine to go dunk his mouth in the open barrel again, lapping at it like a dog. here's one who's true to his nature. "so you ain't got skin 'n yer full of bugs. i ain't ever heard of nothin' like that. got a couple friends, one of em makes undyin' rats full of mushrooms. he talks to the mushrooms 'n stuff. he says they take over the dead n make em better. but never heard of no damn bug. the world's full a wonders, ain't it"

"pays well to be a mercenary, then. how nice." he gets lost in thought for a moment. he's thinking about someone. it doesn't last long. he takes another gulp of wine, cleaning his mouth with the back of his hand again. "friends. dogs need packs. i have mine. but 's different than mercenary work. roots... made out of blood. hunger's better shared." his eyes are odd. he himself is odd. aside from the first smile, which was more of a practiced imitation of what he had seen before, he doesn't really emote much, and his voice is flat, completely even, as if he was a corpse that had recently re-learned to speak. indeed, not a human. indeed, maybe more alike to each other. he looks at the way the gauntlet pulls at the grass. "do you not drink, brother?"

"ah see. so you ain't taken a liking to sedation." he sits down on the grass, now. his dogs come over, sniffing his hands and his clothes. he reaches up to take the fourth duck, ripping a leg off and giving the rest to the dogs. as he eats, duck leg in one hand, the other one mindlessly pets the head of whatever dog's closer. they seem content. "see, stranger, why don't ya buy yerself a house or somethin'? you've got enough gold to buy yourself a title 'n a tiny plot ah land, don't ya? you don't seem like the type to enjoy wanderin'. you look exhausted, ya move tired. but i can't blame ya. dyin' is tiresome, indeed.''

he pulls at some tall stalk, cutting it with his nail and this thumb, and bites off the little undeveloped head of chaff, spitting it away. he passes the straw over to Helm, twirling it between his fingers. "wild dog. aye. stray dog. free dog. don't need a house nor a title nor nothin'. i'm free as free can be. not a slave to no one, not even the gods up above. i do as i want whenever i please. i eat, i drink, i fuck, i kill. 's a good life. gold buys you roasted duck, but not freedom, aye?"

"Wild dog. Wish I could be a stray. I like being fed from a master's hand too much, though." (It takes the the straw and sticks it into its eye slit. Ow. It crooks its knees and folds its legs. After a moment of consideration, it sticks its hands behind its helmet.) "I tried takin over the castle a short while ago. Didn't work. If it did, I would've had a title and land, I guess. D'you still want that three gold?"

"you ain't a person if you don't wanna be a person. bein' a person is too much work. 's all actin' pretend 'n takin' the joke of sapience too far. we are the gods' most annoyin' mistakes." a scoff. he closes his eyes, feeling the soft fur of Cat Gutter's head and back. He sighs through his nose like an old dog, and another dog follows suit. "if ya stop followin' those rules, then ya go back to not-person. children, madmen, cripples, foreigners. if ya upset the theatre of humanity, ya get kicked out of the play. don't play along with them rules, brother, unless yer gonna get some sorta benefit from it." "yeah, would be nice. make sure ya send good fighters. i like duelin'. feels good to steal shit from someone tryin' to kill ya."

he lifts up a finger. "people are dead. they respect the dead a lot more than they respect the livin' at times. that's why there's... songs 'n poems about cocksuckers 'n their lineages n whatever the hell they did while alive... then they die 'n they make 'em saints. but yeah, the looks affect a lot of it, huh?" he takes a blade of grass, plucking it between his fingers, watching it come undone as he toys with it. "you don't remember bein' alive?"

a laugh. it's weird. more of a snort and an animalistic sound of amusement than a proper laugh. it's honest, at least. a bit like a hyena, if either of these dudes knew what hyenas sound like. "right." he moves his head to look over at the dead thing besides him, and he hums while looking over it. "definitely's old. you stuck in there?"

"Stuck in the armor? No. Just hurts to take it off." (As if to prove the point, it adjusts itself so its hands are in the air, and it starts peeling off the left gauntlet. Blood drips down its vambraces. Nice laugh.) "Since I am, uh, fused. Sort of. I guess you don't have that problem?"

oh, huh. sniff sniff. that's a nice smell. blood under armor. but there's that pungency of rot to it, huh. guess they're different in that way. "nah. i just get hungry. i guess the body runs out of blood while healin', so i gotta make more. 'n i get hungry. 'n there's the convulsions, too. i ain't fond of them. but guess i gotta be thankful i can keep my skin. it just scars bad." "so yer stuck in there, like a mollusk. guess that's just how it is, huh? at least yer always protected with that armor, then. like... a beetle... a hard-shelled animal."

"I don't run outta blood ever." (It tosses the gauntlet into the air, then mutters curses when the thing lands on its visor and knocks the partly chewed straw fully into its helmet. It sits up and sticks the skinned hand into the metal to try and retrieve the plant.) "An I get hungry but I don't haveta eat ever. Can you regrow limbs? That might be a bug thing. That's, uh, heh. Two bug things I guess I have. With the shell."

he laughs again, with his odd animal laugh, at the gauntlet incident and the following rummaging in its own visor. ''you dont gotta eat? lucky, then you don't gotta spend so much time lookin' for food, huh? but bein' hungry sucks. you got any way to satisfy the hunger?" ...he thinks about it. "aye, i can regrow limbs. takes me a while, though. 's better if i can just reattach it. gotta hold it a while, though. ya must be some sorta crab. or a metal lobster. man-sized metal lobster. would be a nice beast to draw on the margins of a prayer book."

"I can still eat, mutt." (It mutters, embarrassed.) "You fed me that squirrel and duck leg earlier. An I am capable of removin my visor. I eat people an animals sometimes. I just spent most of a century not eatin. You gotta nice laugh. Do you think it's from your larynx? If I took it would you regrow it?"

"yeah but ya don't die from not eatin', right? starvation sucks. it eats your brain 'n your body 'n leaves you rottin' before you die for real. consider yerself lucky, if hunger won't kill you. then it ain't no different from an itch to scratch nstead of a need." scratch, scratch. he scratches at his own chin, then hums while pressing two fingers to his larynx. "yeah. i've had my head cut off. took me a bit to speak, but ah can do it. why? you wanna open up my throat?"

"Yeah." (It twists around to stare at him, pulling its hand out of its helmet. It's hungry.) "How much can you regrow? I'm hungry. Think it would be interesting if we swapped throats."

a weird smile crawls up on his face. there's a sickening curiosity brewing now; he's the kind of man that likes taking things as far as possible. and when you can't die, then, everything's a ''why the hell not". this is new. "i 'unno. but i won't die. guess i gotta repay yer kindness somehow, eh? go right ahead. i'm dyin' to know too."

"Yeah yeah yeah give me a minute." (It starts pulling on its visor. Undo the latches, pull off the leather, unscrew the bolts. Peel the metal away from the skull, drip blood onto its cuirass. Ow ow ow. Set the plate aside, check his face for a reaction.)

his face remains neutral, almost bored. when the peeling of the visor is done, however, he does raise his eyebrows ever so slightly. he sits up, sniffing at it. sniff sniff. a couple of dogs join, too, but he growls at them, and they back off. "no wonder ya smelled so good. reminds me of skinned venison." he licks at the blood seeping through the muscle tissue of its cheek, underneath the pale lines of where the cheekbone is. a tongue click, as if tasting wine. "interestin'. i've never met nothin' like ye. i've seen undead a bit like this, keepin' their wounds, more skinned or burnt flesh than man, but not as lucid."

''like all meat does. like a dead thing.'' a tilt of the head. like a confused dog. he turns his head to look at his dogs, and does a few chittering, bark-like noises. ears perk up, and each dog leaves their own way, some leaving together, some leaving for the forest on their own. they probably get mad when they see him get hurt. safer without 'em around. "what'cha doin'?"

"Gotta remove the larynx to switch them, don't-" (Its voice gets garbled as the muscle parts for its fingers. Its eyes stay fixed on him. Blood drips down down down, mixing into the grass. Red and green makes such a pretty brown, doesn't it?)

A LAUGH. "oh, ya were serious about it! right, right. i didn't expect ya to do that. yers comes off easy, huh?" he sits down, kneeling. He unsheathes the big knife by his side. He looks at the larynx between the dead knight's fingers. Blood has such a good smell. It makes him hungry again. but it doesn't matter. his eyes fix back on theirs, and he puts three fingers over his own throat-apple, feeling the larynx. As if calculating. He pulls at the skin a little, then, plunges the knife into his own throat. Blood. The sharp pain shooting up into the back of his eyes, the urge to stop. But his eyes remain fixed on it, as if dueling, while he twists the knife and drags it down. He does his best to contain it, but blood begins to force its way out of his mouth. He does that noise men do when stabbed- that choked, skittery sound of pain. His other hand pulls while the other works the blade stuck in his own throat. A dare.

(Its jaw goes slack as it watches, its own fingers wrapping around its larynx and pulling. Muscle and flesh and tendons tears. Hunger slams into it, and it jolts forward. Fingers still in its own throat, its still-gauntleted hand joins the mess on his throat. It tugs at the flesh, tugging it out of the way so it can see better. Easier for him to cut, too. Gods, it's hungry.)

Blood! It comes out of him in neat bursts, out of the wound and out of his mouth, out of his nose, aspiration of the liquid filling his throat to blame. It burns and it hurts, but he cannot help but laugh in a deranged gurgling sound as it lunges for the wound in his throat. he lets go of the knife, feeling the sudden sedation of blood loss make him dizzy. caro enim mea vere est cibus. he doesn't fight back against the urge to die, feeling the ever familiar sensation of limbs going cold and limp. the blood from his mouth smells a bit like wine. his eyes glaze over and become half-lidded, body threatening to fall back.

he opens up the bag with the roasted ducks, tosses a couple at the dogs, which swarm around the birds immediately, tails wagging so hard they may start a tornado at any moment. he takes the third duck with both hands, and takes a bite out of the breast of it, chewing without much politeness but with plenty of pleasure. He rips off one of the legs, and approaches to shove it into the visor as he did with the squirrel early. "try this. s so fuckin good right? right?? different than just roasted over a fire! proper cookin'! god damn!" then, as if answering the last question, he just opens up one of the barrels using a big dagger like a crowbar, and drinks from it by practically dunking his mouth into the dark wine. then he goes, "HAAAAAAH, THAT'S GOOD. THAT'S FUCKIN' GOOD!"

"most dogs dont drink wine but ah do, cus wine's delicious, 'n this is good fuckin' wine!" he sits down on a closed barrel and keeps eating the duck. Big bites, ripping apart chunks of meat and dragging his teeth over the bones to get every last piece of meat he can get. He does eat like a dog. "im jus gonna hide it in a cave n whenever i want wine im gonna go there. s easy. i mostly steal it from like, soldier camps. but s easier to just buy stuff, aye. dont care much for money, but it does buy nice food somtimes, better than eatin' squirrels 'n corpses''

"aye, monks are weak as hell, you can just break 'em easy, just pull 'n twist-" and he does the same thing with the second wing- a pull of the joint, then a twist of the wrist, dislocation. he shoves it in his mouth and eats it. a few chews, then a swallow. he licks his teeth. "bad. cus i was starvin'. i woke up 'n i saw my own dead body besides me, and i was mad with hunger. dogs brought me birds and squirrels sometimes. sometimes rats. but i grabbed at the stiff body of me 'n bit down what i could bite down. i was too thin 'nyways. tasted like... all meat. yknow." he finally finishes the duck. he tosses the bones down, then looks at them. a little eyebrow raise, then a look over at the armored creature besides him. "what's your deal, sellsword? what are ye?"

"gamblin'! that's how ya got all that gold, then? gamblin' 'n winning? audentis fortuna iuvat, somethin' somethin'. never had proper luck mahself, don't like gamblin' unless i can end it in a duel." he gets off the barrel of wine to go dunk his mouth in the open barrel again, lapping at it like a dog. here's one who's true to his nature. "so you ain't got skin 'n yer full of bugs. i ain't ever heard of nothin' like that. got a couple friends, one of em makes undyin' rats full of mushrooms. he talks to the mushrooms 'n stuff. he says they take over the dead n make em better. but never heard of no damn bug. the world's full a wonders, ain't it"

"pays well to be a mercenary, then. how nice." he gets lost in thought for a moment. he's thinking about someone. it doesn't last long. he takes another gulp of wine, cleaning his mouth with the back of his hand again. "friends. dogs need packs. i have mine. but 's different than mercenary work. roots... made out of blood. hunger's better shared." his eyes are odd. he himself is odd. aside from the first smile, which was more of a practiced imitation of what he had seen before, he doesn't really emote much, and his voice is flat, completely even, as if he was a corpse that had recently re-learned to speak. indeed, not a human. indeed, maybe more alike to each other. he looks at the way the gauntlet pulls at the grass. "do you not drink, brother?"

"ah see. so you ain't taken a liking to sedation." he sits down on the grass, now. his dogs come over, sniffing his hands and his clothes. he reaches up to take the fourth duck, ripping a leg off and giving the rest to the dogs. as he eats, duck leg in one hand, the other one mindlessly pets the head of whatever dog's closer. they seem content. "see, stranger, why don't ya buy yerself a house or somethin'? you've got enough gold to buy yourself a title 'n a tiny plot ah land, don't ya? you don't seem like the type to enjoy wanderin'. you look exhausted, ya move tired. but i can't blame ya. dyin' is tiresome, indeed.''

he pulls at some tall stalk, cutting it with his nail and this thumb, and bites off the little undeveloped head of chaff, spitting it away. he passes the straw over to Helm, twirling it between his fingers. "wild dog. aye. stray dog. free dog. don't need a house nor a title nor nothin'. i'm free as free can be. not a slave to no one, not even the gods up above. i do as i want whenever i please. i eat, i drink, i fuck, i kill. 's a good life. gold buys you roasted duck, but not freedom, aye?"

"Wild dog. Wish I could be a stray. I like being fed from a master's hand too much, though." (It takes the the straw and sticks it into its eye slit. Ow. It crooks its knees and folds its legs. After a moment of consideration, it sticks its hands behind its helmet.) "I tried takin over the castle a short while ago. Didn't work. If it did, I would've had a title and land, I guess. D'you still want that three gold?"

"you ain't a person if you don't wanna be a person. bein' a person is too much work. 's all actin' pretend 'n takin' the joke of sapience too far. we are the gods' most annoyin' mistakes." a scoff. he closes his eyes, feeling the soft fur of Cat Gutter's head and back. He sighs through his nose like an old dog, and another dog follows suit. "if ya stop followin' those rules, then ya go back to not-person. children, madmen, cripples, foreigners. if ya upset the theatre of humanity, ya get kicked out of the play. don't play along with them rules, brother, unless yer gonna get some sorta benefit from it." "yeah, would be nice. make sure ya send good fighters. i like duelin'. feels good to steal shit from someone tryin' to kill ya."

he lifts up a finger. "people are dead. they respect the dead a lot more than they respect the livin' at times. that's why there's... songs 'n poems about cocksuckers 'n their lineages n whatever the hell they did while alive... then they die 'n they make 'em saints. but yeah, the looks affect a lot of it, huh?" he takes a blade of grass, plucking it between his fingers, watching it come undone as he toys with it. "you don't remember bein' alive?"

a laugh. it's weird. more of a snort and an animalistic sound of amusement than a proper laugh. it's honest, at least. a bit like a hyena, if either of these dudes knew what hyenas sound like. "right." he moves his head to look over at the dead thing besides him, and he hums while looking over it. "definitely's old. you stuck in there?"

"Stuck in the armor? No. Just hurts to take it off." (As if to prove the point, it adjusts itself so its hands are in the air, and it starts peeling off the left gauntlet. Blood drips down its vambraces. Nice laugh.) "Since I am, uh, fused. Sort of. I guess you don't have that problem?"

oh, huh. sniff sniff. that's a nice smell. blood under armor. but there's that pungency of rot to it, huh. guess they're different in that way. "nah. i just get hungry. i guess the body runs out of blood while healin', so i gotta make more. 'n i get hungry. 'n there's the convulsions, too. i ain't fond of them. but guess i gotta be thankful i can keep my skin. it just scars bad." "so yer stuck in there, like a mollusk. guess that's just how it is, huh? at least yer always protected with that armor, then. like... a beetle... a hard-shelled animal."

"I don't run outta blood ever." (It tosses the gauntlet into the air, then mutters curses when the thing lands on its visor and knocks the partly chewed straw fully into its helmet. It sits up and sticks the skinned hand into the metal to try and retrieve the plant.) "An I get hungry but I don't haveta eat ever. Can you regrow limbs? That might be a bug thing. That's, uh, heh. Two bug things I guess I have. With the shell."

he laughs again, with his odd animal laugh, at the gauntlet incident and the following rummaging in its own visor. ''you dont gotta eat? lucky, then you don't gotta spend so much time lookin' for food, huh? but bein' hungry sucks. you got any way to satisfy the hunger?" ...he thinks about it. "aye, i can regrow limbs. takes me a while, though. 's better if i can just reattach it. gotta hold it a while, though. ya must be some sorta crab. or a metal lobster. man-sized metal lobster. would be a nice beast to draw on the margins of a prayer book."

"I can still eat, mutt." (It mutters, embarrassed.) "You fed me that squirrel and duck leg earlier. An I am capable of removin my visor. I eat people an animals sometimes. I just spent most of a century not eatin. You gotta nice laugh. Do you think it's from your larynx? If I took it would you regrow it?"

"yeah but ya don't die from not eatin', right? starvation sucks. it eats your brain 'n your body 'n leaves you rottin' before you die for real. consider yerself lucky, if hunger won't kill you. then it ain't no different from an itch to scratch nstead of a need." scratch, scratch. he scratches at his own chin, then hums while pressing two fingers to his larynx. "yeah. i've had my head cut off. took me a bit to speak, but ah can do it. why? you wanna open up my throat?"

"Yeah." (It twists around to stare at him, pulling its hand out of its helmet. It's hungry.) "How much can you regrow? I'm hungry. Think it would be interesting if we swapped throats."

a weird smile crawls up on his face. there's a sickening curiosity brewing now; he's the kind of man that likes taking things as far as possible. and when you can't die, then, everything's a ''why the hell not". this is new. "i 'unno. but i won't die. guess i gotta repay yer kindness somehow, eh? go right ahead. i'm dyin' to know too."

"Yeah yeah yeah give me a minute." (It starts pulling on its visor. Undo the latches, pull off the leather, unscrew the bolts. Peel the metal away from the skull, drip blood onto its cuirass. Ow ow ow. Set the plate aside, check his face for a reaction.)

his face remains neutral, almost bored. when the peeling of the visor is done, however, he does raise his eyebrows ever so slightly. he sits up, sniffing at it. sniff sniff. a couple of dogs join, too, but he growls at them, and they back off. "no wonder ya smelled so good. reminds me of skinned venison." he licks at the blood seeping through the muscle tissue of its cheek, underneath the pale lines of where the cheekbone is. a tongue click, as if tasting wine. "interestin'. i've never met nothin' like ye. i've seen undead a bit like this, keepin' their wounds, more skinned or burnt flesh than man, but not as lucid."

''like all meat does. like a dead thing.'' a tilt of the head. like a confused dog. he turns his head to look at his dogs, and does a few chittering, bark-like noises. ears perk up, and each dog leaves their own way, some leaving together, some leaving for the forest on their own. they probably get mad when they see him get hurt. safer without 'em around. "what'cha doin'?"

"Gotta remove the larynx to switch them, don't-" (Its voice gets garbled as the muscle parts for its fingers. Its eyes stay fixed on him. Blood drips down down down, mixing into the grass. Red and green makes such a pretty brown, doesn't it?)

A LAUGH. "oh, ya were serious about it! right, right. i didn't expect ya to do that. yers comes off easy, huh?" he sits down, kneeling. He unsheathes the big knife by his side. He looks at the larynx between the dead knight's fingers. Blood has such a good smell. It makes him hungry again. but it doesn't matter. his eyes fix back on theirs, and he puts three fingers over his own throat-apple, feeling the larynx. As if calculating. He pulls at the skin a little, then, plunges the knife into his own throat. Blood. The sharp pain shooting up into the back of his eyes, the urge to stop. But his eyes remain fixed on it, as if dueling, while he twists the knife and drags it down. He does his best to contain it, but blood begins to force its way out of his mouth. He does that noise men do when stabbed- that choked, skittery sound of pain. His other hand pulls while the other works the blade stuck in his own throat. A dare.

he opens up the bag with the roasted ducks, tosses a couple at the dogs, which swarm around the birds immediately, tails wagging so hard they may start a tornado at any moment. he takes the third duck with both hands, and takes a bite out of the breast of it, chewing without much politeness but with plenty of pleasure. He rips off one of the legs, and approaches to shove it into the visor as he did with the squirrel early. "try this. s so fuckin good right? right?? different than just roasted over a fire! proper cookin'! god damn!" then, as if answering the last question, he just opens up one of the barrels using a big dagger like a crowbar, and drinks from it by practically dunking his mouth into the dark wine. then he goes, "HAAAAAAH, THAT'S GOOD. THAT'S FUCKIN' GOOD!"

"most dogs dont drink wine but ah do, cus wine's delicious, 'n this is good fuckin' wine!" he sits down on a closed barrel and keeps eating the duck. Big bites, ripping apart chunks of meat and dragging his teeth over the bones to get every last piece of meat he can get. He does eat like a dog. "im jus gonna hide it in a cave n whenever i want wine im gonna go there. s easy. i mostly steal it from like, soldier camps. but s easier to just buy stuff, aye. dont care much for money, but it does buy nice food somtimes, better than eatin' squirrels 'n corpses''

"aye, monks are weak as hell, you can just break 'em easy, just pull 'n twist-" and he does the same thing with the second wing- a pull of the joint, then a twist of the wrist, dislocation. he shoves it in his mouth and eats it. a few chews, then a swallow. he licks his teeth. "bad. cus i was starvin'. i woke up 'n i saw my own dead body besides me, and i was mad with hunger. dogs brought me birds and squirrels sometimes. sometimes rats. but i grabbed at the stiff body of me 'n bit down what i could bite down. i was too thin 'nyways. tasted like... all meat. yknow." he finally finishes the duck. he tosses the bones down, then looks at them. a little eyebrow raise, then a look over at the armored creature besides him. "what's your deal, sellsword? what are ye?"

"gamblin'! that's how ya got all that gold, then? gamblin' 'n winning? audentis fortuna iuvat, somethin' somethin'. never had proper luck mahself, don't like gamblin' unless i can end it in a duel." he gets off the barrel of wine to go dunk his mouth in the open barrel again, lapping at it like a dog. here's one who's true to his nature. "so you ain't got skin 'n yer full of bugs. i ain't ever heard of nothin' like that. got a couple friends, one of em makes undyin' rats full of mushrooms. he talks to the mushrooms 'n stuff. he says they take over the dead n make em better. but never heard of no damn bug. the world's full a wonders, ain't it"

"pays well to be a mercenary, then. how nice." he gets lost in thought for a moment. he's thinking about someone. it doesn't last long. he takes another gulp of wine, cleaning his mouth with the back of his hand again. "friends. dogs need packs. i have mine. but 's different than mercenary work. roots... made out of blood. hunger's better shared." his eyes are odd. he himself is odd. aside from the first smile, which was more of a practiced imitation of what he had seen before, he doesn't really emote much, and his voice is flat, completely even, as if he was a corpse that had recently re-learned to speak. indeed, not a human. indeed, maybe more alike to each other. he looks at the way the gauntlet pulls at the grass. "do you not drink, brother?"

"ah see. so you ain't taken a liking to sedation." he sits down on the grass, now. his dogs come over, sniffing his hands and his clothes. he reaches up to take the fourth duck, ripping a leg off and giving the rest to the dogs. as he eats, duck leg in one hand, the other one mindlessly pets the head of whatever dog's closer. they seem content. "see, stranger, why don't ya buy yerself a house or somethin'? you've got enough gold to buy yourself a title 'n a tiny plot ah land, don't ya? you don't seem like the type to enjoy wanderin'. you look exhausted, ya move tired. but i can't blame ya. dyin' is tiresome, indeed.''

he pulls at some tall stalk, cutting it with his nail and this thumb, and bites off the little undeveloped head of chaff, spitting it away. he passes the straw over to Helm, twirling it between his fingers. "wild dog. aye. stray dog. free dog. don't need a house nor a title nor nothin'. i'm free as free can be. not a slave to no one, not even the gods up above. i do as i want whenever i please. i eat, i drink, i fuck, i kill. 's a good life. gold buys you roasted duck, but not freedom, aye?"

"Wild dog. Wish I could be a stray. I like being fed from a master's hand too much, though." (It takes the the straw and sticks it into its eye slit. Ow. It crooks its knees and folds its legs. After a moment of consideration, it sticks its hands behind its helmet.) "I tried takin over the castle a short while ago. Didn't work. If it did, I would've had a title and land, I guess. D'you still want that three gold?"

"you ain't a person if you don't wanna be a person. bein' a person is too much work. 's all actin' pretend 'n takin' the joke of sapience too far. we are the gods' most annoyin' mistakes." a scoff. he closes his eyes, feeling the soft fur of Cat Gutter's head and back. He sighs through his nose like an old dog, and another dog follows suit. "if ya stop followin' those rules, then ya go back to not-person. children, madmen, cripples, foreigners. if ya upset the theatre of humanity, ya get kicked out of the play. don't play along with them rules, brother, unless yer gonna get some sorta benefit from it." "yeah, would be nice. make sure ya send good fighters. i like duelin'. feels good to steal shit from someone tryin' to kill ya."

he lifts up a finger. "people are dead. they respect the dead a lot more than they respect the livin' at times. that's why there's... songs 'n poems about cocksuckers 'n their lineages n whatever the hell they did while alive... then they die 'n they make 'em saints. but yeah, the looks affect a lot of it, huh?" he takes a blade of grass, plucking it between his fingers, watching it come undone as he toys with it. "you don't remember bein' alive?"

a laugh. it's weird. more of a snort and an animalistic sound of amusement than a proper laugh. it's honest, at least. a bit like a hyena, if either of these dudes knew what hyenas sound like. "right." he moves his head to look over at the dead thing besides him, and he hums while looking over it. "definitely's old. you stuck in there?"

"Stuck in the armor? No. Just hurts to take it off." (As if to prove the point, it adjusts itself so its hands are in the air, and it starts peeling off the left gauntlet. Blood drips down its vambraces. Nice laugh.) "Since I am, uh, fused. Sort of. I guess you don't have that problem?"

oh, huh. sniff sniff. that's a nice smell. blood under armor. but there's that pungency of rot to it, huh. guess they're different in that way. "nah. i just get hungry. i guess the body runs out of blood while healin', so i gotta make more. 'n i get hungry. 'n there's the convulsions, too. i ain't fond of them. but guess i gotta be thankful i can keep my skin. it just scars bad." "so yer stuck in there, like a mollusk. guess that's just how it is, huh? at least yer always protected with that armor, then. like... a beetle... a hard-shelled animal."

"I don't run outta blood ever." (It tosses the gauntlet into the air, then mutters curses when the thing lands on its visor and knocks the partly chewed straw fully into its helmet. It sits up and sticks the skinned hand into the metal to try and retrieve the plant.) "An I get hungry but I don't haveta eat ever. Can you regrow limbs? That might be a bug thing. That's, uh, heh. Two bug things I guess I have. With the shell."

he laughs again, with his odd animal laugh, at the gauntlet incident and the following rummaging in its own visor. ''you dont gotta eat? lucky, then you don't gotta spend so much time lookin' for food, huh? but bein' hungry sucks. you got any way to satisfy the hunger?" ...he thinks about it. "aye, i can regrow limbs. takes me a while, though. 's better if i can just reattach it. gotta hold it a while, though. ya must be some sorta crab. or a metal lobster. man-sized metal lobster. would be a nice beast to draw on the margins of a prayer book."

"I can still eat, mutt." (It mutters, embarrassed.) "You fed me that squirrel and duck leg earlier. An I am capable of removin my visor. I eat people an animals sometimes. I just spent most of a century not eatin. You gotta nice laugh. Do you think it's from your larynx? If I took it would you regrow it?"

"yeah but ya don't die from not eatin', right? starvation sucks. it eats your brain 'n your body 'n leaves you rottin' before you die for real. consider yerself lucky, if hunger won't kill you. then it ain't no different from an itch to scratch nstead of a need." scratch, scratch. he scratches at his own chin, then hums while pressing two fingers to his larynx. "yeah. i've had my head cut off. took me a bit to speak, but ah can do it. why? you wanna open up my throat?"

"Yeah." (It twists around to stare at him, pulling its hand out of its helmet. It's hungry.) "How much can you regrow? I'm hungry. Think it would be interesting if we swapped throats."

a weird smile crawls up on his face. there's a sickening curiosity brewing now; he's the kind of man that likes taking things as far as possible. and when you can't die, then, everything's a ''why the hell not". this is new. "i 'unno. but i won't die. guess i gotta repay yer kindness somehow, eh? go right ahead. i'm dyin' to know too."

"Yeah yeah yeah give me a minute." (It starts pulling on its visor. Undo the latches, pull off the leather, unscrew the bolts. Peel the metal away from the skull, drip blood onto its cuirass. Ow ow ow. Set the plate aside, check his face for a reaction.)

his face remains neutral, almost bored. when the peeling of the visor is done, however, he does raise his eyebrows ever so slightly. he sits up, sniffing at it. sniff sniff. a couple of dogs join, too, but he growls at them, and they back off. "no wonder ya smelled so good. reminds me of skinned venison." he licks at the blood seeping through the muscle tissue of its cheek, underneath the pale lines of where the cheekbone is. a tongue click, as if tasting wine. "interestin'. i've never met nothin' like ye. i've seen undead a bit like this, keepin' their wounds, more skinned or burnt flesh than man, but not as lucid."

''like all meat does. like a dead thing.'' a tilt of the head. like a confused dog. he turns his head to look at his dogs, and does a few chittering, bark-like noises. ears perk up, and each dog leaves their own way, some leaving together, some leaving for the forest on their own. they probably get mad when they see him get hurt. safer without 'em around. "what'cha doin'?"

he opens up the bag with the roasted ducks, tosses a couple at the dogs, which swarm around the birds immediately, tails wagging so hard they may start a tornado at any moment. he takes the third duck with both hands, and takes a bite out of the breast of it, chewing without much politeness but with plenty of pleasure. He rips off one of the legs, and approaches to shove it into the visor as he did with the squirrel early. "try this. s so fuckin good right? right?? different than just roasted over a fire! proper cookin'! god damn!" then, as if answering the last question, he just opens up one of the barrels using a big dagger like a crowbar, and drinks from it by practically dunking his mouth into the dark wine. then he goes, "HAAAAAAH, THAT'S GOOD. THAT'S FUCKIN' GOOD!"

"most dogs dont drink wine but ah do, cus wine's delicious, 'n this is good fuckin' wine!" he sits down on a closed barrel and keeps eating the duck. Big bites, ripping apart chunks of meat and dragging his teeth over the bones to get every last piece of meat he can get. He does eat like a dog. "im jus gonna hide it in a cave n whenever i want wine im gonna go there. s easy. i mostly steal it from like, soldier camps. but s easier to just buy stuff, aye. dont care much for money, but it does buy nice food somtimes, better than eatin' squirrels 'n corpses''

"aye, monks are weak as hell, you can just break 'em easy, just pull 'n twist-" and he does the same thing with the second wing- a pull of the joint, then a twist of the wrist, dislocation. he shoves it in his mouth and eats it. a few chews, then a swallow. he licks his teeth. "bad. cus i was starvin'. i woke up 'n i saw my own dead body besides me, and i was mad with hunger. dogs brought me birds and squirrels sometimes. sometimes rats. but i grabbed at the stiff body of me 'n bit down what i could bite down. i was too thin 'nyways. tasted like... all meat. yknow." he finally finishes the duck. he tosses the bones down, then looks at them. a little eyebrow raise, then a look over at the armored creature besides him. "what's your deal, sellsword? what are ye?"

"gamblin'! that's how ya got all that gold, then? gamblin' 'n winning? audentis fortuna iuvat, somethin' somethin'. never had proper luck mahself, don't like gamblin' unless i can end it in a duel." he gets off the barrel of wine to go dunk his mouth in the open barrel again, lapping at it like a dog. here's one who's true to his nature. "so you ain't got skin 'n yer full of bugs. i ain't ever heard of nothin' like that. got a couple friends, one of em makes undyin' rats full of mushrooms. he talks to the mushrooms 'n stuff. he says they take over the dead n make em better. but never heard of no damn bug. the world's full a wonders, ain't it"

"pays well to be a mercenary, then. how nice." he gets lost in thought for a moment. he's thinking about someone. it doesn't last long. he takes another gulp of wine, cleaning his mouth with the back of his hand again. "friends. dogs need packs. i have mine. but 's different than mercenary work. roots... made out of blood. hunger's better shared." his eyes are odd. he himself is odd. aside from the first smile, which was more of a practiced imitation of what he had seen before, he doesn't really emote much, and his voice is flat, completely even, as if he was a corpse that had recently re-learned to speak. indeed, not a human. indeed, maybe more alike to each other. he looks at the way the gauntlet pulls at the grass. "do you not drink, brother?"

"ah see. so you ain't taken a liking to sedation." he sits down on the grass, now. his dogs come over, sniffing his hands and his clothes. he reaches up to take the fourth duck, ripping a leg off and giving the rest to the dogs. as he eats, duck leg in one hand, the other one mindlessly pets the head of whatever dog's closer. they seem content. "see, stranger, why don't ya buy yerself a house or somethin'? you've got enough gold to buy yourself a title 'n a tiny plot ah land, don't ya? you don't seem like the type to enjoy wanderin'. you look exhausted, ya move tired. but i can't blame ya. dyin' is tiresome, indeed.''

he pulls at some tall stalk, cutting it with his nail and this thumb, and bites off the little undeveloped head of chaff, spitting it away. he passes the straw over to Helm, twirling it between his fingers. "wild dog. aye. stray dog. free dog. don't need a house nor a title nor nothin'. i'm free as free can be. not a slave to no one, not even the gods up above. i do as i want whenever i please. i eat, i drink, i fuck, i kill. 's a good life. gold buys you roasted duck, but not freedom, aye?"

"Wild dog. Wish I could be a stray. I like being fed from a master's hand too much, though." (It takes the the straw and sticks it into its eye slit. Ow. It crooks its knees and folds its legs. After a moment of consideration, it sticks its hands behind its helmet.) "I tried takin over the castle a short while ago. Didn't work. If it did, I would've had a title and land, I guess. D'you still want that three gold?"

"you ain't a person if you don't wanna be a person. bein' a person is too much work. 's all actin' pretend 'n takin' the joke of sapience too far. we are the gods' most annoyin' mistakes." a scoff. he closes his eyes, feeling the soft fur of Cat Gutter's head and back. He sighs through his nose like an old dog, and another dog follows suit. "if ya stop followin' those rules, then ya go back to not-person. children, madmen, cripples, foreigners. if ya upset the theatre of humanity, ya get kicked out of the play. don't play along with them rules, brother, unless yer gonna get some sorta benefit from it." "yeah, would be nice. make sure ya send good fighters. i like duelin'. feels good to steal shit from someone tryin' to kill ya."

he lifts up a finger. "people are dead. they respect the dead a lot more than they respect the livin' at times. that's why there's... songs 'n poems about cocksuckers 'n their lineages n whatever the hell they did while alive... then they die 'n they make 'em saints. but yeah, the looks affect a lot of it, huh?" he takes a blade of grass, plucking it between his fingers, watching it come undone as he toys with it. "you don't remember bein' alive?"

a laugh. it's weird. more of a snort and an animalistic sound of amusement than a proper laugh. it's honest, at least. a bit like a hyena, if either of these dudes knew what hyenas sound like. "right." he moves his head to look over at the dead thing besides him, and he hums while looking over it. "definitely's old. you stuck in there?"

"Stuck in the armor? No. Just hurts to take it off." (As if to prove the point, it adjusts itself so its hands are in the air, and it starts peeling off the left gauntlet. Blood drips down its vambraces. Nice laugh.) "Since I am, uh, fused. Sort of. I guess you don't have that problem?"

oh, huh. sniff sniff. that's a nice smell. blood under armor. but there's that pungency of rot to it, huh. guess they're different in that way. "nah. i just get hungry. i guess the body runs out of blood while healin', so i gotta make more. 'n i get hungry. 'n there's the convulsions, too. i ain't fond of them. but guess i gotta be thankful i can keep my skin. it just scars bad." "so yer stuck in there, like a mollusk. guess that's just how it is, huh? at least yer always protected with that armor, then. like... a beetle... a hard-shelled animal."

"I don't run outta blood ever." (It tosses the gauntlet into the air, then mutters curses when the thing lands on its visor and knocks the partly chewed straw fully into its helmet. It sits up and sticks the skinned hand into the metal to try and retrieve the plant.) "An I get hungry but I don't haveta eat ever. Can you regrow limbs? That might be a bug thing. That's, uh, heh. Two bug things I guess I have. With the shell."

he laughs again, with his odd animal laugh, at the gauntlet incident and the following rummaging in its own visor. ''you dont gotta eat? lucky, then you don't gotta spend so much time lookin' for food, huh? but bein' hungry sucks. you got any way to satisfy the hunger?" ...he thinks about it. "aye, i can regrow limbs. takes me a while, though. 's better if i can just reattach it. gotta hold it a while, though. ya must be some sorta crab. or a metal lobster. man-sized metal lobster. would be a nice beast to draw on the margins of a prayer book."

"I can still eat, mutt." (It mutters, embarrassed.) "You fed me that squirrel and duck leg earlier. An I am capable of removin my visor. I eat people an animals sometimes. I just spent most of a century not eatin. You gotta nice laugh. Do you think it's from your larynx? If I took it would you regrow it?"

"yeah but ya don't die from not eatin', right? starvation sucks. it eats your brain 'n your body 'n leaves you rottin' before you die for real. consider yerself lucky, if hunger won't kill you. then it ain't no different from an itch to scratch nstead of a need." scratch, scratch. he scratches at his own chin, then hums while pressing two fingers to his larynx. "yeah. i've had my head cut off. took me a bit to speak, but ah can do it. why? you wanna open up my throat?"

"Yeah." (It twists around to stare at him, pulling its hand out of its helmet. It's hungry.) "How much can you regrow? I'm hungry. Think it would be interesting if we swapped throats."

a weird smile crawls up on his face. there's a sickening curiosity brewing now; he's the kind of man that likes taking things as far as possible. and when you can't die, then, everything's a ''why the hell not". this is new. "i 'unno. but i won't die. guess i gotta repay yer kindness somehow, eh? go right ahead. i'm dyin' to know too."

"Yeah yeah yeah give me a minute." (It starts pulling on its visor. Undo the latches, pull off the leather, unscrew the bolts. Peel the metal away from the skull, drip blood onto its cuirass. Ow ow ow. Set the plate aside, check his face for a reaction.)

his face remains neutral, almost bored. when the peeling of the visor is done, however, he does raise his eyebrows ever so slightly. he sits up, sniffing at it. sniff sniff. a couple of dogs join, too, but he growls at them, and they back off. "no wonder ya smelled so good. reminds me of skinned venison." he licks at the blood seeping through the muscle tissue of its cheek, underneath the pale lines of where the cheekbone is. a tongue click, as if tasting wine. "interestin'. i've never met nothin' like ye. i've seen undead a bit like this, keepin' their wounds, more skinned or burnt flesh than man, but not as lucid."

he opens up the bag with the roasted ducks, tosses a couple at the dogs, which swarm around the birds immediately, tails wagging so hard they may start a tornado at any moment. he takes the third duck with both hands, and takes a bite out of the breast of it, chewing without much politeness but with plenty of pleasure. He rips off one of the legs, and approaches to shove it into the visor as he did with the squirrel early. "try this. s so fuckin good right? right?? different than just roasted over a fire! proper cookin'! god damn!" then, as if answering the last question, he just opens up one of the barrels using a big dagger like a crowbar, and drinks from it by practically dunking his mouth into the dark wine. then he goes, "HAAAAAAH, THAT'S GOOD. THAT'S FUCKIN' GOOD!"

"most dogs dont drink wine but ah do, cus wine's delicious, 'n this is good fuckin' wine!" he sits down on a closed barrel and keeps eating the duck. Big bites, ripping apart chunks of meat and dragging his teeth over the bones to get every last piece of meat he can get. He does eat like a dog. "im jus gonna hide it in a cave n whenever i want wine im gonna go there. s easy. i mostly steal it from like, soldier camps. but s easier to just buy stuff, aye. dont care much for money, but it does buy nice food somtimes, better than eatin' squirrels 'n corpses''

"aye, monks are weak as hell, you can just break 'em easy, just pull 'n twist-" and he does the same thing with the second wing- a pull of the joint, then a twist of the wrist, dislocation. he shoves it in his mouth and eats it. a few chews, then a swallow. he licks his teeth. "bad. cus i was starvin'. i woke up 'n i saw my own dead body besides me, and i was mad with hunger. dogs brought me birds and squirrels sometimes. sometimes rats. but i grabbed at the stiff body of me 'n bit down what i could bite down. i was too thin 'nyways. tasted like... all meat. yknow." he finally finishes the duck. he tosses the bones down, then looks at them. a little eyebrow raise, then a look over at the armored creature besides him. "what's your deal, sellsword? what are ye?"

"gamblin'! that's how ya got all that gold, then? gamblin' 'n winning? audentis fortuna iuvat, somethin' somethin'. never had proper luck mahself, don't like gamblin' unless i can end it in a duel." he gets off the barrel of wine to go dunk his mouth in the open barrel again, lapping at it like a dog. here's one who's true to his nature. "so you ain't got skin 'n yer full of bugs. i ain't ever heard of nothin' like that. got a couple friends, one of em makes undyin' rats full of mushrooms. he talks to the mushrooms 'n stuff. he says they take over the dead n make em better. but never heard of no damn bug. the world's full a wonders, ain't it"

"pays well to be a mercenary, then. how nice." he gets lost in thought for a moment. he's thinking about someone. it doesn't last long. he takes another gulp of wine, cleaning his mouth with the back of his hand again. "friends. dogs need packs. i have mine. but 's different than mercenary work. roots... made out of blood. hunger's better shared." his eyes are odd. he himself is odd. aside from the first smile, which was more of a practiced imitation of what he had seen before, he doesn't really emote much, and his voice is flat, completely even, as if he was a corpse that had recently re-learned to speak. indeed, not a human. indeed, maybe more alike to each other. he looks at the way the gauntlet pulls at the grass. "do you not drink, brother?"

"ah see. so you ain't taken a liking to sedation." he sits down on the grass, now. his dogs come over, sniffing his hands and his clothes. he reaches up to take the fourth duck, ripping a leg off and giving the rest to the dogs. as he eats, duck leg in one hand, the other one mindlessly pets the head of whatever dog's closer. they seem content. "see, stranger, why don't ya buy yerself a house or somethin'? you've got enough gold to buy yourself a title 'n a tiny plot ah land, don't ya? you don't seem like the type to enjoy wanderin'. you look exhausted, ya move tired. but i can't blame ya. dyin' is tiresome, indeed.''

he pulls at some tall stalk, cutting it with his nail and this thumb, and bites off the little undeveloped head of chaff, spitting it away. he passes the straw over to Helm, twirling it between his fingers. "wild dog. aye. stray dog. free dog. don't need a house nor a title nor nothin'. i'm free as free can be. not a slave to no one, not even the gods up above. i do as i want whenever i please. i eat, i drink, i fuck, i kill. 's a good life. gold buys you roasted duck, but not freedom, aye?"

"Wild dog. Wish I could be a stray. I like being fed from a master's hand too much, though." (It takes the the straw and sticks it into its eye slit. Ow. It crooks its knees and folds its legs. After a moment of consideration, it sticks its hands behind its helmet.) "I tried takin over the castle a short while ago. Didn't work. If it did, I would've had a title and land, I guess. D'you still want that three gold?"

"you ain't a person if you don't wanna be a person. bein' a person is too much work. 's all actin' pretend 'n takin' the joke of sapience too far. we are the gods' most annoyin' mistakes." a scoff. he closes his eyes, feeling the soft fur of Cat Gutter's head and back. He sighs through his nose like an old dog, and another dog follows suit. "if ya stop followin' those rules, then ya go back to not-person. children, madmen, cripples, foreigners. if ya upset the theatre of humanity, ya get kicked out of the play. don't play along with them rules, brother, unless yer gonna get some sorta benefit from it." "yeah, would be nice. make sure ya send good fighters. i like duelin'. feels good to steal shit from someone tryin' to kill ya."

he lifts up a finger. "people are dead. they respect the dead a lot more than they respect the livin' at times. that's why there's... songs 'n poems about cocksuckers 'n their lineages n whatever the hell they did while alive... then they die 'n they make 'em saints. but yeah, the looks affect a lot of it, huh?" he takes a blade of grass, plucking it between his fingers, watching it come undone as he toys with it. "you don't remember bein' alive?"

a laugh. it's weird. more of a snort and an animalistic sound of amusement than a proper laugh. it's honest, at least. a bit like a hyena, if either of these dudes knew what hyenas sound like. "right." he moves his head to look over at the dead thing besides him, and he hums while looking over it. "definitely's old. you stuck in there?"

"Stuck in the armor? No. Just hurts to take it off." (As if to prove the point, it adjusts itself so its hands are in the air, and it starts peeling off the left gauntlet. Blood drips down its vambraces. Nice laugh.) "Since I am, uh, fused. Sort of. I guess you don't have that problem?"

oh, huh. sniff sniff. that's a nice smell. blood under armor. but there's that pungency of rot to it, huh. guess they're different in that way. "nah. i just get hungry. i guess the body runs out of blood while healin', so i gotta make more. 'n i get hungry. 'n there's the convulsions, too. i ain't fond of them. but guess i gotta be thankful i can keep my skin. it just scars bad." "so yer stuck in there, like a mollusk. guess that's just how it is, huh? at least yer always protected with that armor, then. like... a beetle... a hard-shelled animal."

"I don't run outta blood ever." (It tosses the gauntlet into the air, then mutters curses when the thing lands on its visor and knocks the partly chewed straw fully into its helmet. It sits up and sticks the skinned hand into the metal to try and retrieve the plant.) "An I get hungry but I don't haveta eat ever. Can you regrow limbs? That might be a bug thing. That's, uh, heh. Two bug things I guess I have. With the shell."

he laughs again, with his odd animal laugh, at the gauntlet incident and the following rummaging in its own visor. ''you dont gotta eat? lucky, then you don't gotta spend so much time lookin' for food, huh? but bein' hungry sucks. you got any way to satisfy the hunger?" ...he thinks about it. "aye, i can regrow limbs. takes me a while, though. 's better if i can just reattach it. gotta hold it a while, though. ya must be some sorta crab. or a metal lobster. man-sized metal lobster. would be a nice beast to draw on the margins of a prayer book."

"I can still eat, mutt." (It mutters, embarrassed.) "You fed me that squirrel and duck leg earlier. An I am capable of removin my visor. I eat people an animals sometimes. I just spent most of a century not eatin. You gotta nice laugh. Do you think it's from your larynx? If I took it would you regrow it?"

"yeah but ya don't die from not eatin', right? starvation sucks. it eats your brain 'n your body 'n leaves you rottin' before you die for real. consider yerself lucky, if hunger won't kill you. then it ain't no different from an itch to scratch nstead of a need." scratch, scratch. he scratches at his own chin, then hums while pressing two fingers to his larynx. "yeah. i've had my head cut off. took me a bit to speak, but ah can do it. why? you wanna open up my throat?"

"Yeah." (It twists around to stare at him, pulling its hand out of its helmet. It's hungry.) "How much can you regrow? I'm hungry. Think it would be interesting if we swapped throats."

a weird smile crawls up on his face. there's a sickening curiosity brewing now; he's the kind of man that likes taking things as far as possible. and when you can't die, then, everything's a ''why the hell not". this is new. "i 'unno. but i won't die. guess i gotta repay yer kindness somehow, eh? go right ahead. i'm dyin' to know too."

he opens up the bag with the roasted ducks, tosses a couple at the dogs, which swarm around the birds immediately, tails wagging so hard they may start a tornado at any moment. he takes the third duck with both hands, and takes a bite out of the breast of it, chewing without much politeness but with plenty of pleasure. He rips off one of the legs, and approaches to shove it into the visor as he did with the squirrel early. "try this. s so fuckin good right? right?? different than just roasted over a fire! proper cookin'! god damn!" then, as if answering the last question, he just opens up one of the barrels using a big dagger like a crowbar, and drinks from it by practically dunking his mouth into the dark wine. then he goes, "HAAAAAAH, THAT'S GOOD. THAT'S FUCKIN' GOOD!"

"most dogs dont drink wine but ah do, cus wine's delicious, 'n this is good fuckin' wine!" he sits down on a closed barrel and keeps eating the duck. Big bites, ripping apart chunks of meat and dragging his teeth over the bones to get every last piece of meat he can get. He does eat like a dog. "im jus gonna hide it in a cave n whenever i want wine im gonna go there. s easy. i mostly steal it from like, soldier camps. but s easier to just buy stuff, aye. dont care much for money, but it does buy nice food somtimes, better than eatin' squirrels 'n corpses''

"aye, monks are weak as hell, you can just break 'em easy, just pull 'n twist-" and he does the same thing with the second wing- a pull of the joint, then a twist of the wrist, dislocation. he shoves it in his mouth and eats it. a few chews, then a swallow. he licks his teeth. "bad. cus i was starvin'. i woke up 'n i saw my own dead body besides me, and i was mad with hunger. dogs brought me birds and squirrels sometimes. sometimes rats. but i grabbed at the stiff body of me 'n bit down what i could bite down. i was too thin 'nyways. tasted like... all meat. yknow." he finally finishes the duck. he tosses the bones down, then looks at them. a little eyebrow raise, then a look over at the armored creature besides him. "what's your deal, sellsword? what are ye?"

"gamblin'! that's how ya got all that gold, then? gamblin' 'n winning? audentis fortuna iuvat, somethin' somethin'. never had proper luck mahself, don't like gamblin' unless i can end it in a duel." he gets off the barrel of wine to go dunk his mouth in the open barrel again, lapping at it like a dog. here's one who's true to his nature. "so you ain't got skin 'n yer full of bugs. i ain't ever heard of nothin' like that. got a couple friends, one of em makes undyin' rats full of mushrooms. he talks to the mushrooms 'n stuff. he says they take over the dead n make em better. but never heard of no damn bug. the world's full a wonders, ain't it"

"pays well to be a mercenary, then. how nice." he gets lost in thought for a moment. he's thinking about someone. it doesn't last long. he takes another gulp of wine, cleaning his mouth with the back of his hand again. "friends. dogs need packs. i have mine. but 's different than mercenary work. roots... made out of blood. hunger's better shared." his eyes are odd. he himself is odd. aside from the first smile, which was more of a practiced imitation of what he had seen before, he doesn't really emote much, and his voice is flat, completely even, as if he was a corpse that had recently re-learned to speak. indeed, not a human. indeed, maybe more alike to each other. he looks at the way the gauntlet pulls at the grass. "do you not drink, brother?"

"ah see. so you ain't taken a liking to sedation." he sits down on the grass, now. his dogs come over, sniffing his hands and his clothes. he reaches up to take the fourth duck, ripping a leg off and giving the rest to the dogs. as he eats, duck leg in one hand, the other one mindlessly pets the head of whatever dog's closer. they seem content. "see, stranger, why don't ya buy yerself a house or somethin'? you've got enough gold to buy yourself a title 'n a tiny plot ah land, don't ya? you don't seem like the type to enjoy wanderin'. you look exhausted, ya move tired. but i can't blame ya. dyin' is tiresome, indeed.''

he pulls at some tall stalk, cutting it with his nail and this thumb, and bites off the little undeveloped head of chaff, spitting it away. he passes the straw over to Helm, twirling it between his fingers. "wild dog. aye. stray dog. free dog. don't need a house nor a title nor nothin'. i'm free as free can be. not a slave to no one, not even the gods up above. i do as i want whenever i please. i eat, i drink, i fuck, i kill. 's a good life. gold buys you roasted duck, but not freedom, aye?"

"Wild dog. Wish I could be a stray. I like being fed from a master's hand too much, though." (It takes the the straw and sticks it into its eye slit. Ow. It crooks its knees and folds its legs. After a moment of consideration, it sticks its hands behind its helmet.) "I tried takin over the castle a short while ago. Didn't work. If it did, I would've had a title and land, I guess. D'you still want that three gold?"

"you ain't a person if you don't wanna be a person. bein' a person is too much work. 's all actin' pretend 'n takin' the joke of sapience too far. we are the gods' most annoyin' mistakes." a scoff. he closes his eyes, feeling the soft fur of Cat Gutter's head and back. He sighs through his nose like an old dog, and another dog follows suit. "if ya stop followin' those rules, then ya go back to not-person. children, madmen, cripples, foreigners. if ya upset the theatre of humanity, ya get kicked out of the play. don't play along with them rules, brother, unless yer gonna get some sorta benefit from it." "yeah, would be nice. make sure ya send good fighters. i like duelin'. feels good to steal shit from someone tryin' to kill ya."

he lifts up a finger. "people are dead. they respect the dead a lot more than they respect the livin' at times. that's why there's... songs 'n poems about cocksuckers 'n their lineages n whatever the hell they did while alive... then they die 'n they make 'em saints. but yeah, the looks affect a lot of it, huh?" he takes a blade of grass, plucking it between his fingers, watching it come undone as he toys with it. "you don't remember bein' alive?"

a laugh. it's weird. more of a snort and an animalistic sound of amusement than a proper laugh. it's honest, at least. a bit like a hyena, if either of these dudes knew what hyenas sound like. "right." he moves his head to look over at the dead thing besides him, and he hums while looking over it. "definitely's old. you stuck in there?"

"Stuck in the armor? No. Just hurts to take it off." (As if to prove the point, it adjusts itself so its hands are in the air, and it starts peeling off the left gauntlet. Blood drips down its vambraces. Nice laugh.) "Since I am, uh, fused. Sort of. I guess you don't have that problem?"

oh, huh. sniff sniff. that's a nice smell. blood under armor. but there's that pungency of rot to it, huh. guess they're different in that way. "nah. i just get hungry. i guess the body runs out of blood while healin', so i gotta make more. 'n i get hungry. 'n there's the convulsions, too. i ain't fond of them. but guess i gotta be thankful i can keep my skin. it just scars bad." "so yer stuck in there, like a mollusk. guess that's just how it is, huh? at least yer always protected with that armor, then. like... a beetle... a hard-shelled animal."

"I don't run outta blood ever." (It tosses the gauntlet into the air, then mutters curses when the thing lands on its visor and knocks the partly chewed straw fully into its helmet. It sits up and sticks the skinned hand into the metal to try and retrieve the plant.) "An I get hungry but I don't haveta eat ever. Can you regrow limbs? That might be a bug thing. That's, uh, heh. Two bug things I guess I have. With the shell."

he laughs again, with his odd animal laugh, at the gauntlet incident and the following rummaging in its own visor. ''you dont gotta eat? lucky, then you don't gotta spend so much time lookin' for food, huh? but bein' hungry sucks. you got any way to satisfy the hunger?" ...he thinks about it. "aye, i can regrow limbs. takes me a while, though. 's better if i can just reattach it. gotta hold it a while, though. ya must be some sorta crab. or a metal lobster. man-sized metal lobster. would be a nice beast to draw on the margins of a prayer book."

"I can still eat, mutt." (It mutters, embarrassed.) "You fed me that squirrel and duck leg earlier. An I am capable of removin my visor. I eat people an animals sometimes. I just spent most of a century not eatin. You gotta nice laugh. Do you think it's from your larynx? If I took it would you regrow it?"

"yeah but ya don't die from not eatin', right? starvation sucks. it eats your brain 'n your body 'n leaves you rottin' before you die for real. consider yerself lucky, if hunger won't kill you. then it ain't no different from an itch to scratch nstead of a need." scratch, scratch. he scratches at his own chin, then hums while pressing two fingers to his larynx. "yeah. i've had my head cut off. took me a bit to speak, but ah can do it. why? you wanna open up my throat?"

he opens up the bag with the roasted ducks, tosses a couple at the dogs, which swarm around the birds immediately, tails wagging so hard they may start a tornado at any moment. he takes the third duck with both hands, and takes a bite out of the breast of it, chewing without much politeness but with plenty of pleasure. He rips off one of the legs, and approaches to shove it into the visor as he did with the squirrel early. "try this. s so fuckin good right? right?? different than just roasted over a fire! proper cookin'! god damn!" then, as if answering the last question, he just opens up one of the barrels using a big dagger like a crowbar, and drinks from it by practically dunking his mouth into the dark wine. then he goes, "HAAAAAAH, THAT'S GOOD. THAT'S FUCKIN' GOOD!"

"most dogs dont drink wine but ah do, cus wine's delicious, 'n this is good fuckin' wine!" he sits down on a closed barrel and keeps eating the duck. Big bites, ripping apart chunks of meat and dragging his teeth over the bones to get every last piece of meat he can get. He does eat like a dog. "im jus gonna hide it in a cave n whenever i want wine im gonna go there. s easy. i mostly steal it from like, soldier camps. but s easier to just buy stuff, aye. dont care much for money, but it does buy nice food somtimes, better than eatin' squirrels 'n corpses''

"aye, monks are weak as hell, you can just break 'em easy, just pull 'n twist-" and he does the same thing with the second wing- a pull of the joint, then a twist of the wrist, dislocation. he shoves it in his mouth and eats it. a few chews, then a swallow. he licks his teeth. "bad. cus i was starvin'. i woke up 'n i saw my own dead body besides me, and i was mad with hunger. dogs brought me birds and squirrels sometimes. sometimes rats. but i grabbed at the stiff body of me 'n bit down what i could bite down. i was too thin 'nyways. tasted like... all meat. yknow." he finally finishes the duck. he tosses the bones down, then looks at them. a little eyebrow raise, then a look over at the armored creature besides him. "what's your deal, sellsword? what are ye?"

"gamblin'! that's how ya got all that gold, then? gamblin' 'n winning? audentis fortuna iuvat, somethin' somethin'. never had proper luck mahself, don't like gamblin' unless i can end it in a duel." he gets off the barrel of wine to go dunk his mouth in the open barrel again, lapping at it like a dog. here's one who's true to his nature. "so you ain't got skin 'n yer full of bugs. i ain't ever heard of nothin' like that. got a couple friends, one of em makes undyin' rats full of mushrooms. he talks to the mushrooms 'n stuff. he says they take over the dead n make em better. but never heard of no damn bug. the world's full a wonders, ain't it"

"pays well to be a mercenary, then. how nice." he gets lost in thought for a moment. he's thinking about someone. it doesn't last long. he takes another gulp of wine, cleaning his mouth with the back of his hand again. "friends. dogs need packs. i have mine. but 's different than mercenary work. roots... made out of blood. hunger's better shared." his eyes are odd. he himself is odd. aside from the first smile, which was more of a practiced imitation of what he had seen before, he doesn't really emote much, and his voice is flat, completely even, as if he was a corpse that had recently re-learned to speak. indeed, not a human. indeed, maybe more alike to each other. he looks at the way the gauntlet pulls at the grass. "do you not drink, brother?"

"ah see. so you ain't taken a liking to sedation." he sits down on the grass, now. his dogs come over, sniffing his hands and his clothes. he reaches up to take the fourth duck, ripping a leg off and giving the rest to the dogs. as he eats, duck leg in one hand, the other one mindlessly pets the head of whatever dog's closer. they seem content. "see, stranger, why don't ya buy yerself a house or somethin'? you've got enough gold to buy yourself a title 'n a tiny plot ah land, don't ya? you don't seem like the type to enjoy wanderin'. you look exhausted, ya move tired. but i can't blame ya. dyin' is tiresome, indeed.''

he pulls at some tall stalk, cutting it with his nail and this thumb, and bites off the little undeveloped head of chaff, spitting it away. he passes the straw over to Helm, twirling it between his fingers. "wild dog. aye. stray dog. free dog. don't need a house nor a title nor nothin'. i'm free as free can be. not a slave to no one, not even the gods up above. i do as i want whenever i please. i eat, i drink, i fuck, i kill. 's a good life. gold buys you roasted duck, but not freedom, aye?"

"Wild dog. Wish I could be a stray. I like being fed from a master's hand too much, though." (It takes the the straw and sticks it into its eye slit. Ow. It crooks its knees and folds its legs. After a moment of consideration, it sticks its hands behind its helmet.) "I tried takin over the castle a short while ago. Didn't work. If it did, I would've had a title and land, I guess. D'you still want that three gold?"

"you ain't a person if you don't wanna be a person. bein' a person is too much work. 's all actin' pretend 'n takin' the joke of sapience too far. we are the gods' most annoyin' mistakes." a scoff. he closes his eyes, feeling the soft fur of Cat Gutter's head and back. He sighs through his nose like an old dog, and another dog follows suit. "if ya stop followin' those rules, then ya go back to not-person. children, madmen, cripples, foreigners. if ya upset the theatre of humanity, ya get kicked out of the play. don't play along with them rules, brother, unless yer gonna get some sorta benefit from it." "yeah, would be nice. make sure ya send good fighters. i like duelin'. feels good to steal shit from someone tryin' to kill ya."

he lifts up a finger. "people are dead. they respect the dead a lot more than they respect the livin' at times. that's why there's... songs 'n poems about cocksuckers 'n their lineages n whatever the hell they did while alive... then they die 'n they make 'em saints. but yeah, the looks affect a lot of it, huh?" he takes a blade of grass, plucking it between his fingers, watching it come undone as he toys with it. "you don't remember bein' alive?"

a laugh. it's weird. more of a snort and an animalistic sound of amusement than a proper laugh. it's honest, at least. a bit like a hyena, if either of these dudes knew what hyenas sound like. "right." he moves his head to look over at the dead thing besides him, and he hums while looking over it. "definitely's old. you stuck in there?"

"Stuck in the armor? No. Just hurts to take it off." (As if to prove the point, it adjusts itself so its hands are in the air, and it starts peeling off the left gauntlet. Blood drips down its vambraces. Nice laugh.) "Since I am, uh, fused. Sort of. I guess you don't have that problem?"

oh, huh. sniff sniff. that's a nice smell. blood under armor. but there's that pungency of rot to it, huh. guess they're different in that way. "nah. i just get hungry. i guess the body runs out of blood while healin', so i gotta make more. 'n i get hungry. 'n there's the convulsions, too. i ain't fond of them. but guess i gotta be thankful i can keep my skin. it just scars bad." "so yer stuck in there, like a mollusk. guess that's just how it is, huh? at least yer always protected with that armor, then. like... a beetle... a hard-shelled animal."

"I don't run outta blood ever." (It tosses the gauntlet into the air, then mutters curses when the thing lands on its visor and knocks the partly chewed straw fully into its helmet. It sits up and sticks the skinned hand into the metal to try and retrieve the plant.) "An I get hungry but I don't haveta eat ever. Can you regrow limbs? That might be a bug thing. That's, uh, heh. Two bug things I guess I have. With the shell."

he laughs again, with his odd animal laugh, at the gauntlet incident and the following rummaging in its own visor. ''you dont gotta eat? lucky, then you don't gotta spend so much time lookin' for food, huh? but bein' hungry sucks. you got any way to satisfy the hunger?" ...he thinks about it. "aye, i can regrow limbs. takes me a while, though. 's better if i can just reattach it. gotta hold it a while, though. ya must be some sorta crab. or a metal lobster. man-sized metal lobster. would be a nice beast to draw on the margins of a prayer book."

he opens up the bag with the roasted ducks, tosses a couple at the dogs, which swarm around the birds immediately, tails wagging so hard they may start a tornado at any moment. he takes the third duck with both hands, and takes a bite out of the breast of it, chewing without much politeness but with plenty of pleasure. He rips off one of the legs, and approaches to shove it into the visor as he did with the squirrel early. "try this. s so fuckin good right? right?? different than just roasted over a fire! proper cookin'! god damn!" then, as if answering the last question, he just opens up one of the barrels using a big dagger like a crowbar, and drinks from it by practically dunking his mouth into the dark wine. then he goes, "HAAAAAAH, THAT'S GOOD. THAT'S FUCKIN' GOOD!"

"most dogs dont drink wine but ah do, cus wine's delicious, 'n this is good fuckin' wine!" he sits down on a closed barrel and keeps eating the duck. Big bites, ripping apart chunks of meat and dragging his teeth over the bones to get every last piece of meat he can get. He does eat like a dog. "im jus gonna hide it in a cave n whenever i want wine im gonna go there. s easy. i mostly steal it from like, soldier camps. but s easier to just buy stuff, aye. dont care much for money, but it does buy nice food somtimes, better than eatin' squirrels 'n corpses''