Deadman's Tales

Numbers of posters could already be found the same day. The military even decided to gather the uneasy crowd of Einstudht district for a public announcement.

They declared the killing of an official insider of the seven, telling the people that it is a duty to come the next morning in front of the military capital to witness and cheer the decapitation.

All that for a death sentence of an innocent woman.

A couple of minutes jumped over midnight.

Parch was in a daze. Her mental state was deteriorating. Taking in all the emotions and sudden changes of happenings was a sadistic thing to endure for a mere human being. A few moments earlier she was reflecting on her life and preparing to meet Death, now she stares at Rö, a proclaimed dead man who is alive and well, standing right in front of her.

Even though at a loss for words, Parch immediately said his name.

"M-Master… Rö…"

"Yeah, yeah… Keep quiet for me."

"T-They told me you were dead!"

"Damn it, I said keep quiet."

Rö then immediately set his distance. He leaned over a corner and put his back against the cold, concrete wall. This way, Parch could not see him and he could not see Parch, however, the same would apply for any incoming guards.

Rö then whispered.

"Parch, right… I don't know you that much, but I guessed that someone would be here. Strangely it's you, but it's better than nothing."

"W-What are you… T-They told me you died…"

"I'll tell you what happened as long as you keep quiet and don't ask too many questions."

Parch agreed to Rö's terms of silence. At this point, she would've agreed to anything and everything — a dying man would consider flying pigs.

"It all started with the surprise attack Eivör endured. If she wiped the slate clean, most of this would've happened. But, the surprise attack enabled the beginning of this whole entire plan."

"We tried to analyze the surprise attack, but… Eh, w-wait… You said… Plan?"

"Yeah. Now stop interrupting."

—

From what I gathered, the surprise attack was the igniter.

Imagine some idiot attacking someone like us, a high class execution squad. No one would even dare to do such a thing, and even if they tried to, unveiling our plans and locations is almost impossible. While keeping this in mind, the whole topic immediately raises our suspicion towards the Lord. If it was that bastard, how did he find out Eivör's then approximate location? It raised some brows in the group, but I did not give a shit.

Back in Teutoburg forest, we had a fight with Ásdís Promealís, but she managed to escape. Right when the Witch escaped, I decided to go my own way. As you probably know from the past, I started giving less and less for this group for my own reasons, and after that slut of a Witch escaped, I haven't had peace ever since.

In the moment, the others were too preoccupied with an injured kid whom I still have no idea who he was or where he came from. When the others were around him, Maurice approached me as he knew my future intentions.

I thought that he was being boring as usual, but then he changed my mind. He said I can go if I want, but with one last errand to fulfill. He was acting like he was the boss of me, which I didn't like one bit. In the end, I decided to hear him out.

"Eivör seems to be had caught in a surprise attack. Someone was after her, or, put it like this; someone is onto all of us. A certain someone knew her exact location and where she was traveling to. This alone puts us all at a great risk."

"Why should I care?"

"There's something I need to tell you and want to entrust you with it. Through the past few weeks, I've been gathering data in secret."

"HA-HA-HAH! So much of that teamwork bullshit you always speak of."

"There are things that even the other should not know, Rö. Look, I have gathered a list of orders from the Lord to his insiders throughout the whole month of the past year. This is just a feeling, but I think it may be linked to the surprise attack."

"What does it got to do with me?"

"Not to mention, I have full credentials of the people that have worked for him that month. Excellent killing material if you ask me. On top of that, a perfect opportunity to get more information about this Witch, maybe even the Lord himself."

"HA-HA-HAH! Now you're talking! How did you find out all of that anyway?"

"That's not important right now, this list here is."

He then gave me a paper with four names on it.

Mary and Gashper Gowál, sister and brother, a prostitute and a leading man in a copper industry. Talk about contrast between the two. It's always like this, if you ask me. One part of the family goes filthy rich, the others find comfort in that and take the money for something else.

Zol Tonther. Found the bastard killed by the military long ago, so I crossed him of the list.

And Amelia Clew, a bar owner. Those were the four people on Megwire's list and they all worked for the Lord in the past. I wanted to see their dying, miserable faces, so I started seeking them.

I found Mary first, but it turned out Mary didn't know much, so I strangled her on the spot. Next on the list was the brother, who turned out to be the main course.

I killed a couple of officers on the way when I arrived to Einstudht district, just to make a grand announcement. Later that day, I was quicker than the dogs and found Gashper in one of his offices.

I dragged him in the outskirts of Einstudht district. I did some research and found an abandoned building where the military couldn't find us — a perfect location if you ask me.

In there, I beat the living shit out of him, then got all what I needed to hear. Turned out the Lord needed copper and radioactive liquids for God knows what reason.

But then things took an interesting turn and it made my blood vibrate with excitement.

"You're being deceived, you're being deceived!!"

Gashper Gowál kept screaming these words as I was preparing to kill him. At one moment, I was so pissed off and had enough of his annoying voice that I decided to rip his tongue out.

But then he said Megwire's full name. He said that he was a traitor that was working for the Lord.

"Y-You were sent out to this district by that filthy Vulture, Maurice… Maurice Megwire! He sent you out here on purpose to erase the evidence! A-Are you working with him against the others?!"

He kept on blabbering but I didn't care much. Then he caught my attention.

"T-There are three more people in this district that have seen the Vulture working with the Lord. My… My sister! You probably killed her too, right?!"

I was amazed that he knew. He restlessly kept on going.

"I can tell that you are not informed! Please, spare me, I have done nothing wrong! Maurice Megwire is a traitor and is working against you! He set you out to erase the evidence for him and execute the people who know his true identity, then… Then he will probably kill you too!

He's working with the Witches' cult!!"

I circled this through my head. This was the moment I decided to try something fun.

I started torturing and beating him up until he started becoming unrecognizable. I spilled him on the floor and kept kicking him and heavily bruising him.

"PLEASE! NO MORE!"

The poor bastard kept screaming and pleading for mercy as I was messing up his face. After a fine beat up, he was still conscious, which was my goal, but if I personally saw him somewhere else, I would never tell that it was him.

—

"T-Then you killed him?"

Parch thought she could expect the outcome, but she was wrong.

"I didn't. This was even more fun than simply killing him."

—

He said that Maurice was a traitor, which was very unlikely to be true. In short terms, I didn't believe it. He was just another crazy totalitarian in my eyes.

But he did mention his full name, the number of people on the list and the Witches' cult. The last one intrigued me the most, since all I could dream of was slaying that Wood Witch who had cowardly escaped her destiny.

I took all of my clothes off and put on this ugly robe I had with me. I also put my clothes on Gashper and instructed him on what he had to say. For a moment he was being unreasonable, so I wanted to cut off his penis. As I almost started doing so, I realized that he will be in even more pain and no one was in the ability to stay sane after that, let alone talk and follow verbal instructions.

Since he was still in shock and denial, I said I'd let him go if he followed my instructions. That seemed to work. His beat up face cracked a weird smile.

I left two wolves next to him and instructed them to guard Gashper, who was at this point, the imitation of me. It seemed more believable with the wolves anyway.

I set him as a replica of myself to see if what he was saying was true. Since he said that Megwire worked with the Witches' cult and will kill me, I figured that either he will come alone to face me or that he will send a Witch or two to do the dirty job for him.

If no one would come after a while and if what Gashper said was a lie, I would have ended up making him die the worst death possible — God, I wanted that so bad!

After the replica was fully set, I went into hiding near the building. A couple of hours later, the military end up searching all of the copper company's locations and offices. They announce that Gashper Gowál was gone missing.

A couple of more hours later, a Witch appears in front of the replica. Gashper was right.

Maurice was a fucking traitor all along.

—

The disbelief surfing and pulsing through Parch's weakened body was too big not to notice. She stared at Rö for awhile after listening to his absurd story, thinking it was the end of it.

"I-I can't believe it… Master Maurice… He deceived all of us? Ester and I have been working with him all this time and… It's just…"

"Keep it down."

—

The Witch didn't say a word. Since I was in hiding, I didn't get to see a full glance of her. All I saw was long cloth hiding some twisted symbols that were carved in her hands and some bandages hanging off of her.

Honestly, I didn't think that it would work, but I guess it did. She fell for it.

She easily killed off my wolves and got a hold of Gashper, the replica. He tried acting tough, but he burst out crying in the end.

He thought that I'd come to rescue him or something like that because he obeyed my orders, but the Witch stabbed the bastard several times and left him dead — something I wanted to do, either way. After that, I waited a bit and got out of hiding.

My doubts were satisfied.

I assumed that the Witch went straight to Azura Mountain. In the end, the odds were working with me. This was the perfect opportunity to fake my own death.

The Witch would probably notify Megwire that she had successfully killed me, so in that scenario, I would be out of the picture. If I exposed the replica's body to the military and authorities, they too would be convinced that the Wolf was no more.

I waited until the sun fully set and carried the corpse of the replica and the two wolves somewhere where the authorities will find it — right in front of Marshal Capital.

Everything went smoothly and soon after the newspapers declared the grand death of the third magic user out of seven. "The Wolf is dead! Several stabbing wounds proved to be fatal!" and something like "An unknown hero kills an official member of the seven, but where is he now?" It was all hilarious to me.

—

[So in the end, Rö fought off Maurice's plans and managed to escape his death and fake it. That would only explain the commander's words about how they found his corpse — they caught the bait!]

"B-But… How did you know that I was here?"

"I'm actually here to search for more answers myself.

You see, now I have another burning objective, and it's to make Megwire eat his own shit. The fool thought he could kill me off, what a gullible bastard. When things settled down a bit, I decided to lurk around. I heard from a few officers that a report was handed in by the new recruits. The report clearly stated the exact latitude and longitude of our safe spot in Azura Mountain, which only led me to the conclusion that it was handed in by none other than Megwire. It was another fragment of his plan, I supposed."

"W-Why would he do that?"

"When I heard that the military rushed to the spot, I decided to wait it out a bit. I was expecting for Abel to return, so I could ask her what the hell was going on, but the mistress wasn't there. No one was. All I heard was that the others went missing and all that the military brought back was you.

Care to explain?"

The eerie look that Rö handed in to Parch made her tremble in fear. She began explaining the situation to Rö and swore that she didn't know a single thing about the vanishing of the rest. After a minute of explaining, Rö started connecting the dots.

"All there was were ruins? The whole place exploded?"

Parch let her head fall down. She nodded while skintight with her chest.

"The Azura safe spot is no more, and even I don't have a clue where the rest disappeared to. E-Even Ester might have been caught in it… A-And poor Eivör and Kollie too, they're the youngest out of us all… To go through things like that…"

"He sent out the letter so he could throw the military off his back. He knew that if they saw those ruins, they would proclaim the seven either as missing in action or dead, but you slipped by and they managed to accidentally find you. You also said that Megwire delayed your trip to this district and that shortly after you blacked out. He was probably using you as a negotiation item or something like that."

Parch gasped, but quickly put her hand over her mouth as she remembered that she swore to the right to remain as quiet as possible. But after she thought about it a bit more, she just couldn't hold back.

"What… What are we going to do now?!"

"We? Look, if you raise your voice one more time, I swear I'll just leave you here. I don't know what you're going to do, and I don't seem to care."

"H-How were you planning to get me out anyway? I'm locked and chained up" —

Right after this question, Rö unveiled himself to Parch once more, only this time, with a key and a body bag. They needed to be extraordinarily quick, thus Rö unlocked Parch's cellar and untied her.

He claimed that getting the key was the easy part, since most of the underground guards seemed to slack off at this time of the night. In addition to that, he was never hesitant for a stealthy murder, even if he usually preferred the louder method.

Parch couldn't get her eyes off the body bag Rö brought with him. At first she pondered about how he managed to bring it with him, but then she started thinking about who was in it.

"The… Body bag…?"

"It's the corpse of Amelia Clew, the last person on the list. It turned out I actually didn't need her, but I wanted to get inside her and kill her right after I taste her over and over again. I came to the bar disguised, we went upstairs and I got the job done. Couldn't have left the seven in any better way. I killed her right before I came here, so we'll put her in your place, leave a little surprise to the military dogs."

And so they did.

Parch locked the cellar once more and they both escaped out of the undergrounds of the Marshal Capital.

When they finally made a safe distance, Rö decided to split into the darkness, leaving Parch on her own. He disappeared before she even knew it. When she turned around for that split second she was looking to the other direction, Rö was nowhere to be found.

While all on her own, Parch started facing several mental breakdowns.

It was finally dawn.