Zombie Hunt II
Celeste remains on her haunches and lifts an and extends a forelimb, at the shoulder there's a branch thick enough to make a sturdy staff from wedged under scale splintered and protruding under scales, but it looks as if it's just beneath the skin, so trivial compared to what it could be
Marrow turns slowly towards the draconian. His hands reach for her, tanned palms settling on the extended forelimb: one rests just beneath the elbow while the other braces and balances the wrist. His eyes darken as though with brooding, but the blackness spreads from the nadirs, swirling into solid obsidian blackness. He sees the problem sure enough, but scrutinizes her whole health and state of well-being, no longer grinning.
Izett walks along the group listening to them talk as they escort the wiggly zombie back toward the village. Intent on taking it to one of the butcher shops so that they will have all the equipment necessary for cutting this critter up to see what makes it tick.
Harold drags the squirming thing along "Where to Baroness?" he heads toward a likely building.
Izett glances to Harold with his question, "I'm thinking one of the butcher shops. It'll have a large table and all the knives and saws we could need without contaminating some place that we actually treat our injured at. What do you think?" she glances to Tessa and Celeste and Marrow.
Harold nods and grunts as he drags the disgusting thing into the Butcher shop and dumps it on a table. "How'sa this" he flicks some puss and ooze from his gauntlets.
Tessa follows Harold into the butcher shop, frowning when the zombie is thrown up on the table. It doesn't seem to be because she has concerns about abusing the Undead though.
Winter slips into the shop behind Harold and Izett and Tessa. She's clearly curious as to what Izett is up to.
Izett nods her head moving to start lighting laterns all around the room to brighten it even further, "Perfect. Now just need to get it up onto the table. I want to see if I can find any markings or something." she glances to Marrow and Celeste, "Can you take a look as well. Maybe there is something phsyically different..well outside of the whole already dead and still moving thing?" glancing to Tessa, "Can you give me a hand with the rags? Need to see if there is any ruins or markings on the flesh."
Izett nods her head moving to start lighting laterns all around the room to brighten it even further, "Perfect. Now just need to get it up onto the table. I want to see if I can find any markings or something." considering the wiggling zombie she considers, "When the doctors get here maybe they can notice something phsyically connecting." she states softly glancing to Tessa, "Can you help me get the rags off. I don't want to disturb the bindings, but do want to look for any runic markings?"
Muttering to those near her, Celeste looks up at Marrow and smiles wanely, She mutters something. she's got a gash to her shoulder and torn clothes, but it looks MUCH easier to tend in this form without scales and it's shrunk to scale with the lady.
Harold stands in the back of the room, this is not Knights work.
"Very well, m'lady." Tessa says, striding forward and arming herself with a small dagger. She begans to cut the rag away, ignoring the zombie's thrashing.
Izett nods her head a bit to Tessa pulling out her own dagger to start working away the rags without undoing the bindings, "M'lady..would you care to help?" seeking if Winter wishes to help with this work as well. Hoping with such diverse backgrounds someone may be able to spot something.
Winter wrinkles her nose at the smell but nods, "I'll do what I can." She replies to Izett. She moves to assist the Ladies with examining the Zombie, even holding him down if need be. At least she's not afraid to get dirty.
Celeste arrives, her shoulder bandaged and she is now in human form. She groans as she steps in, "You can smell the stink all the way outside." she laments.
Tessa wrapped her face. Nyah-Nyah. She begans to pull the sliced rags off the zombie's body, revealing the naked man that it (mostly) still is.
Izett nods her head in agreement with Celeste, "Indeed..we're currently removing the rags. Trying to find any abnormalities..or even maybe runic markings or such. Care to look for anything physical?" she inquires helping the others take the rags away searching the decaying flesh for markings or something to give them a clue.
The clothing and bits of rotted flesh and muscle come away.
Marrow slinks into the butcher's shop after Celeste. He holds the door for the Lady Proxy before she enters and is grinning a brazen-toothed brilliant smile. Years as a missionary is the annals of the Golden Circle conditioned his resistance to all manner of stenches, "Remind me /never/ to buy meat here!" His eyes rove the room and predictably settle on the bound undead, "Different." He approaches warily.
Celeste makes a face at Marrow, "That. Is. Disgusting." she declares, She unslings her medics bag and pulls out a small tin, smearing some clear wazy paste under her nose before slipping in further
Izett hmms softly as she considers the flesh, "I'm not seeing any sort of runic markings, or even tattooing." she glances toward Celeste and Marrow stepping back to give them room, "Maybe there is some sort of physical alteration?" she questions, not really the sort skilled in the cutting.
Winter glances at Marrow briefly before going back to looking over the undead thing.
"Zombie would suggest that it once lived. Is there any signs of a doctor having opened the man up and having placed the ruin inside the body?" Tessa suggests. "Maybe a long suture scar?"
Celeste hrrms, "I can try to call someone who has the ability to sense magic, and someone who can sense things through use of the pattern. I doubt anyone'd know but Faeilla's ilk are...spooky. They might be able to discern one among the masses has been altered. I doubt they give them physicals, though." her tone dry. "They are in such numbers I can't imagine anything physically was done to activate them, but I know little of these things. What do you need of me?"
Marrow eyes Celeste with an innocent pair of loamy brown eyes that, swerving, send a wink to Winter. He almost skips nearer to the butcher's block and peers with his strangely well kempt hair falling across a noble brow at the body, "Did you check the inside of his mouth?"
A rope would prevent that.
Izett inhales slowly studying the creature, "Well from what I can discern. Zombies require a necromancer nearby to activate them. Control them. These..there has never been any sign on either side of the curtain of the necromancer. So where is the puppet strings?"
Celeste pauses and wonders, "I wonder if zombies have been shadow found...hrrm. Can we discern if these bodies are in fact, Lyonessian?"
"You could check the battlefields or graveyard and make an educated guess off that, but how does that matter Celeste? Would knowing that information make it easier to determine who is behind them?" Tessa asks, neutrally. Not shooting holes in the idea so much as hoping for an explanation.
Celeste comments to Tessa, "It tells us if this is necromancy-as magic like this rarely weathers shadow travel well so it'd mean it could be magic...if they are /shadowfound/ it means we're dealing with a pattern walker-and that narrows down the list of suspects /considerably/. It also violates the condition of Ascolat's surrender and opens the gates for aggression against Ascolat without violating the terms."
Marrow scratches the back of his neck, "If I were a sneaky necromancer fiend operating legions of undead through hidden runes I would brand the bodies at the roof of the mouth. Strategic place not often sought out by folks like us. Celeste is right." Did everyone hear the cleric correctly? "If they are /shadow found/ it enlightens us to the caliber of the potential puppet master. You can't achieve that without knowledge of the Pattern. But whether or not the bodies are Lyossian is damn near moot."
Izett considers for several moments, "I'd have to look through the history logs if any remain that didn't get destroyed under water. Otherwise..no real way of knowing. Umm..I don't see anything physically.
We can check the mouth like suggested. Then we just start cutting. There was some things that didn't make sense of the body parts I was seeing, but I'm not a doctor."
Tessa leans forward, tracing the body with her fingers. She is seeking any signs that the man has been opened before. "I am not against taking the rope out, but I assure you, that our guest will make it difficult to inspect. Thank you, Celeste."
Celeste shrugs, "I disagree. Anyway, you wish my cousin and I to carve this turkey?"
Harold tugs off his gauntlets and draws his dagger "Carve? I can do that" Harold steps toward the table.
Izett nods her head a bit to Celeste, "I'm thinking its our only answer. Maybe following the logic of mouth. Maybe the were fed something or injected?" she questions not really knowing how you'd tell such things, but knowing its possible.
Celeste laughs and gives Harold a found look, "My, you're more bloodthirsty than usual. We'll work that vinegar out of you..." she waves him off, "We didn't go through all the trouble to hack it up-and I doubt anyone wants the mess." She makes a face, "You want the honors or shall I, Cousin?" she wonders to Marrow.
Winter steps back, allowing the doctors plenty of room to move about the table.
Marrow scratches the back of his head, honeydew hair cropped to settle neatly over the nape, "I'd like to here the discrepancies you mentioned, Lady Izett. I can take samples of skin, blood and saliva. Check those out. This is a piss poor thing to do to a bloke!" He regards the zombie with pity, sucking on his teeth.
Tessa shrugs, moving out of the two doctor's way.
Harold tucks the dagger away "I've been taking these things apart for days." he moves back to lean on the wall.
Marrow withdraws the sleek scalpel from the brown sash binding his midsection. He flips it deftly between lean sun-soaked fingers as he prowls the table.
Celeste mutters, "I'm tired of Zombies. Road tainted zombies. Blood magic zombies. Diseased zombies. Cursed Zombies. Crying out loud." She looks empathetically on Harold, her expression softening briefly and empathy lighting her gaze, "We'll find you a more worthy opponent, I hope." Her gaze threatens to linger too long and her gaze drags back down to the zombie with a wrinkle of her nose. She begins to lay out tools and finds a large scalpel, beginning to cut from sternum to pelvis.
Tessa's expression is hidden behind a mask of cloth, but she's probably pretty happy she can hide her face behind a mask these days.
Izett steps back as the two begin to cut. Wiping off her hands, then washing them from having been pealing off the rags. She then reaches for something in the pouch to her side pulling out a bit of oil and smearing it beneath her nose to cover the stench, "I can't put my finger on it. But some of the parts..they had..weird..I dunno. Maybe something with the veins.."
Winter winces as Celeste prepares to cut, "Is there a way to put the creature down first. He was once a man after all." It's the first time she's shown any unease with the zombies.
Harold hmmms "I don't think it feels"
Marrow sets the scalpel aside in favor of a pair of thongs, "What precisely about their veins did you find unsettling?" The cleric is speaking to Izett even as he pincers flabby folds of rot infested flesh apart to facilitate Celeste's incision, "Were they a strange color? Inflamed? Oddly shaped? Anything you can remember might help." He uses his surgeon's voice: it's day-time-drama husky.
Celeste notes to Winter, "It's dead, Winter. It's nerves register no pain." her eyes go from slate to silver as she looks it over in that strange Mandrake vision. She frowns and states flatly, "Blood." she looks up at Izett, "One of my advisors is a bloodmage, perhaps I should consult him." She continues to examine, "Hard to say with the decay..."
As you begin to cut into the zombie everything looks relatively as it should be. Rotting flesh, rotting organs, blackened with the passage of time and rot. Blood doesn't really flow as there isn't really a heart beating within the thing, simply blackened ooze of the blood that has thickened within the body, along with puss and ooze of the decay going on within the creature. The creature itself doesn't seem phased by the cutting outside of being pissed off and still trying to get free of the bindings to attack, seeming to have a one track focus, kill.
"Should I take a look?" Marrow asks Celeste, dabbing gauze at a coagulated stream of puss.
Celeste steps back, "By all means."
Izett watches and listens as the two speak. Nodding her head as they seem to think the same as she did. Something wasn't right with the torn off limbs, and they are finding the same, "Do..do you have a clue what it is?" she questions leaning up onto her toes to peer curiously into the cut trying to see and understand what was seeming to be just off out on the battlefield.
Celeste frowns and with her clean hand reaches and grabs a pair of funny looking multi-layered spectacles, she flips several lenses up until she's looking through about three which make her eyes look huge and buggy, and leans down, "Wo de ma!" She breaths, "This is..." She shakes her head, "This is the first I've every seen of this." she scowls darkly, "This is an unholy abomination, a bastardy, a /mockery/ of life's natural ebb and flow....but DAMNED interesting..." She hrrms and cuts a square loose and sets it aside, watching it, "...very, very strange. Is it...parasitic, do you think?"
Marrow grins. The smile is symmetrical and his stare at Celeste is one bordering on fondness, "Just like old times. Do you think its life, not death we're up against? A critter of some sort that exists on it's own? Viruses are parasitic, but it is a bacteria What's it doing?" His tools are still embedded deep within the zombie, but he peers at the Proxy, giddy with macabre curiosity.
Celeste murmurs abruptly, "I have an idea, if it's possible....I need to confer with Princess Fiona or Prince Bleys, Perhaps Baldric-Also someone should bring this matter to Artemus Feldane, I think." She hrrms, "I'm not sure, the last time I saw something like this it was clinging to Princess Fiona, and was fungal. This is *awfully* coincidental."
Celeste steps away and pulls off her cloves and pulls off her spectacles, feeling around for her trump deck and shuffling through several cards thoughtfully.
Izett pauses peering curiously, "Artemus Feldane?" she questions curiously moving slowly closer, "Is it plant based?" she questions moving to have a closer look with renewed curiosity. She's almost afraid to ask or extend her hand toward the body, "Show me..which is..well it..and which..isn't?"
Harold hmmmsss "Do your mojo Baroness" he draws his sword "let's see what will happen?"
Marrow reaches with pincers and plucks the carved square of flesh from Celeste's side of the table. He tucks the severed fleshy corners onto the raw pussy gash left by the removed skin and exchanges his tools with a flourish for a needle and waxen thread. He intends to sew the sample back ON to the groaning, twitching flayed body.
Celeste is standing in an inn somewhere, a man dissecting a protesting Zombie behind her and several people cautiously peering in morbid curiosity, "Good evening your Highness."
Celeste is talking to her card, of course.
Izett looks toward Celeste in a bit of shock, that that quick there is contact to the royals of Amber. Slowly she frowns and looks toward Harold, "Perhaps it is best if we turn it over to Artemus, I'm not match for the likes of him." she states softly moving to back away from the corpse.
Celeste twitches, her eyes rimming in silver, "Ah, pardon me for intruding upon your evening but...I wondered if you recalled your sister's predicament a couple of weeks ago? With the green hair?"
Celeste lifts an eyebrow down at the card, "I see I have your attention. I'm /not/ prying into your sister's affairs, I called you because she's not answering but..I was curious what you knew about the organism or location where she acquired the substance?"
Harold shakes his head "He is not here and you are Izett. I want to know...." he waves his hand at the body "What is going on here."