The Price Of Humanity (TMOE #3)

Chapter 14: The grim

The weather was perfect for digging up corpses in secret. Gloomy enough to keep the everyday person inside, but not too dark to see what they were doing. It occurred to Lucius that having a preferred weather for what could be considered glorified grave robbery might be strange, but he also tried to remind himself that it was technically an ordinary unburial.

Just a secret one, in the dark.

There was nothing wrong with that, he repeated in his head. The grim would not mind. Not with a priest on their side.

He glanced over at Father Runar, who looked about as intimidating as ever despite his apparent sympathy for Lucius and his dead wife that Frey had so kindly thought of. He was walking in front of his acolytes with a stern expression while Lucius, Tom, and two men Aldrik had sent to aid with the digging walked behind them, keeping a smaller distance out of respect.

An eerie feeling prickled Lucius' neck. He couldn't put reason to it, unable to hear anything out of the ordinary but he'd been in enough threatening situations in his life to know when he was being watched.

He made a hasty turn of his head to spot any lurkers, remembering what Eliza had said about her possibly being followed before, but either there was no one there or they had disappeared before he could find them.

A bump against his legs almost made him fall over, and he turned his gaze forward again only to shift it downwards immediately after.

"Oh, so just you then," he muttered quietly, scowling at the blight cat's wide, staring eyes. It kept up with his pace to keep getting in the way of his feet, resulting in him kicking at it to shoo it away. He had other cats to focus on that night, and not the unholy kind.

"Are you alright?" Tom had finally noticed Lucius' staggering movements and sent him a troubled look.

"Yeah, it's just—" Lucius pointed his hand down at nothing. The blight had disappeared out of sight, and he pursed his lips before retracting his hand. "There was... Something stuck under my boot."

He wasn't sure whether the others could see the cat or if it always avoided being spotted, but regardless no one seemed to know about it and Lucius was not in the mood for that whole story.

What did it want though? Why was it trying to stop him from going to the graveyard? Of course Wrinkleface wouldn't want him to get a hold of the bones, but the blight cat had usually only appeared right before something dangerous. What if there was something there? What if the grim refused the unburial for some reason? Lucius' life aside, the Scourge wanted those parasitic veins intact and if their host body got the grim treatment on holy ground they would not fare well.

As always though, what choice did he have? Possibly unspeakable death by grim or undoubtedly unspeakable death by blightish veins?

The gates to the graveyard sent chills down Lucius' spine. While he hadn't turned to dust on the South Kerilian graveyard when facing Catherine something in him was protesting, squeezing his chest like a nightmare hug. What if things had changed when the veins spread further? Maybe he was more unholy now than back then.

He swallowed, closing his eyes before stepping past the gates and onto hallowed grass.

Nothing.

He released a breath of relief before hurrying after the others, following Father Runar's path to an indeed weather bitten headstone. Moss had begun growing around the edges and water from the ground had caused a large crack in the middle of it. If Lucius had a say it barely counted as a grave anymore, what with the state it was in.

Father Runar then beckoned for him to stand in front of the grave while he himself took the priest's usual spot behind it to begin the unburial without further ado.